Lili Elbe & Gerda Wegener Pt. 2

In part 2 of this story, Lili Elbe finally found a doctor who could give her some good answers! But despite the support of her wife Gerda, her doctor, and her friends, Lili faced an uncertain future, going to extremes to leave her old life behind.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, everybody, Welcome back to Ridiculous Romance. Hello, we're your hosts.
I'm Eli, I'm Diana, and we're very excited that you're
here to hear part two of the Lily Elbe and
go to Regnar story. Yeah, um, I hope everybody listening.
How a chance to listen to part one? If you
didn't pause this right, go back into your app cycle

(00:23):
one episode back and give that a listen first. Yeah,
you may be a little lost. Yeah, it'd be like,
I don't know, be like stepping into someone's life when
they're you know, middle aged and uh and and just
taking the story from there and you have no idea
who they are, what their whole thing is. You know,
nobody wants that. That's why we stopped making friends in

(00:43):
our childhood friends only. Well, how's everybody doing. It's Friday.
That's exciting for some I know right for this we
we used to have brunch job, so Friday was just
like Friday. Yeah, the threat of coming work weekend, horrible
horrible weekend. Those were there was a great job and

(01:08):
a horrible job at the same time. Anybody who ever
weighted tables knows what I'm talking about. I feel like
a lot of jobs could fit into that category. However, Well,
the thing about serving is the flexibility and the freedom
and the early you know, if you're doing brunch, the
early out time, so by you know, to three o'clock,
I've got the whole rest of the day ahead of me.

(01:28):
Except I'm I'm a zombie because I woke up at
five am, right, and then ran around doing crazy tasks.
All that was the best shape of my life was
when I was so true I had to carry that
those ice buckets was great. You had guns carrying those
ice buckets, I know, right. Well, plus I had that
thing where you know they'll be like, well, i'll get it.

(01:51):
You know, it's too heavy for you, And I was like,
watch this show you. I'll show you it's too heavy,
you know, And then I come up like, is kind
of too heavy? Should My friend Mike used to be like,
your veins in your neck they're so prominent. But I'd
be like, move, I can do it. But of course

(02:12):
we're not here today to talk about waiting tables. We're
here today talk about uh, We're here today to talk
about waiting for a better world. Yeah, waiting for society
to catch the funk up. So if you caught part one,
and I hope you did, you know we're talking about
Lily Elbe and Gerda Beginer and I say that we

(02:34):
just go ahead and jump right into the second part
of our lives here and not waste any more time.
You're ready, Yeah, let's do it. Hey, their friends come listen. Well,
Elia and Diana got some stories to tell. There's no matchmaking,
no romantic tips. It's just about ridiculous relationships. I love.
It might be any type of person at all, and
abstract cons and a concrete wall. But if there's a story,

(02:57):
we went the second plans we show its Agilus well
a production of I Heart Radio. And just to reiterate,
as we're telling this story again, normally, you know, we
don't want to dead name people or talk about their
old pronouns. But in this particular version of the story,
which we did Paul from Lily's own memoirs, she distinctly

(03:19):
talks about in are and Lily as two very separate people. Um,
this is a very different time. Uh. You know, we've
we talked a lot about how the language has evolved. Um,
the science has evolved, the understanding of the situations evolved. Um.
But we're going to tell the story like she did,
um and sort of refer to both of them individually

(03:41):
at different times. Yeah. When we left off last time
Ininar was heading to the Magnus Hirschfield Institute for Sexual
Research for his very first operation. This place, this, remember
this incredible place that existed in the late twenties early
thirties in Germany that was immagical in terms of how
they were researching and appreciating and progressing the idea of

(04:04):
what it meant to be gay or transgender. Yeah, amazing place.
Just blew my mind to this place existed, and it
made me very angry that it was then destroyed by
the Nazis and and reset the whole damn conversation they
were having back then, it did and throwing this additional
quick fling, I guess, but discovered too that the Nazis

(04:24):
not only completely destroyed this hospital all its records, its library,
everything that it had built, but it also of course
had a list of patients, and sadly, the Nazis did
sees that list and used it to round up a
bunch of people and kill them and exterminate them for
being different and so but at this point in our story,

(04:45):
the Magnus Hirshfield Institute is still awesome, going strong and
is kind of providing like the one ray of hope
in inners life at this point. UM. So he's heading
off for his first operation, and you know, he knew
that he had decided to end his life on May one,
nineteen thirty because of all this torment that he was

(05:07):
going through. UM, and he was kind of in this
mind space that like, you know, if this operation is successful,
Lily gets to live. And that was kind of the
best case scenario because because no matter what happened in
Are was was done. You know, we're done with in Are.
So full of hope and also a lot of fear.

(05:29):
Inar traveled to the institute alone to undertake this this
first operation. The doctor at the institute told him that
during the operation, which was to remove inars testicles um,
the doctor had indeed discovered a shriveled pair of ovaries
that had not been able to fully develop. So it's

(05:49):
possible that Inar was intersex, although that is disputed by
several of the sources. I'm not sure exactly why. If
it's just that, you know, maybe they didn't have a
very good understanding of being intersexed at that point, and
so now we wouldn't necessarily call it that or you
know whatever, but Iinar definitely wrote, you know, they found ovaries.
They're pretty sure that I was meant to develop as

(06:11):
a woman and just didn't because I had both sexual organs.
And after the operation, they had told Iar that this
was a very minor operation that he was going to undergo.
But of course it took nearly two hours and for
days afterward, she was in terrible, terrible pain. Um, but
nurses and doctors were congratulating her on her fine soprano

(06:33):
voice that she had. Now Um, she wrote like a
scribbled a note to a nurse and they were like,
no man could have written this. It's a woman's script,
you know, which I thought was kind of funny. Sim
In's handwriting and men's handwriting being so different. Well, they've
got to they have this uh practice of affirmation. I
think this hospital sounds like let's just things that make

(06:54):
her feel good, that which is true and and and uh.
She even said that doctor came in and kissed her
hand and called her madam, and it the title rang
in her ears, like this beautiful you know, so that
that really said a lot to me that the title madam,
being called ma'am for the first time was just so
like powerful of such a big moment for her. Um.

(07:17):
And of course Claude Provost uh Lily's bo I guess
you could call um. He sent a bouquet of flowers
and said each bloom was a greeting from him to Lily.
And then Gerda came to join Lily and they had
some kind of comical awkward times trying to explain about
her wife. I think because maybe in this hospital it

(07:40):
was pretty unusual for their patients to either be married
already or for their spouse to be like still with
them at this point. Um. But it was pretty it
was a pretty funny story where Lily's like feels so
weird being like, this is my wife. I guess is
that the best way because I'm a woman now women
don't have wives, you know, And so she's like, this

(08:02):
is my wife, and the doctors like, oh, yes, I know,
and kisses Gerda's hand and it's like men are such deceivers,
which is amazing. So I think you're right. It was
probably a practice of like, hey, you're you know, we're
we're helping you transition also in your mind right, right,
well as in your body right. Lily was recovering from

(08:24):
her operation and now she was trying to go out more,
but she was pretty nervous that people were going to
laugh at her or you know, call her a man
when she was out. So Gerda and some other friends
their's took Lily out to meet a Danish friend of theirs.
And this Danish friend didn't recognize Lily as Einar, and
Gerda thought that would make Lily happy because, as we

(08:46):
sort of said in part one, this idea of passing
quotes as a woman, as we've seen, was like very
important to Lily. It clearly made her feel more valid,
and she was really terrified that people would say she
was a man and when she was out in the world.
So you know, Gerta's thinking, well, this will make her
feel better. This girl didn't even recognize her, but it

(09:07):
actually made Lily sad because she was starting to worry
that Lily didn't have any friends out there in the world.
You know, if people didn't recognize that she was in
are she kind of had to start over socially, Yeah,
which I think is so interesting because it's like, you know,
in the hospital, the worst fear is that anyone would go, hey,
aren't you in are you know? But then once she's

(09:30):
out and she's feeling really lonely, like she's you know,
she does recognize her Danish friends, and she wants to
talk to her Danish friend and she's like, but she
doesn't know me, So now I'm like a baby. So
now it's time for the big operation with her doctor
Kurt Varna Cross, and so she went on to his hospital,

(09:51):
which was the Women's hospital in Berlin, and on the
journey in the train, she realized that she's kind of
noticing the landscape with a painter's eye, is she was
picking up color and detail and stuff like that, and
it really upset her because she started to feel like
I Are was kind of still within her. She's like,
when am I going to be free of in are
Innars the painter, you know what I mean. And before

(10:13):
her operation, Ininar and Gerda had both talked about in
Are stealing Lily's youth by practicing this deception upon her,
as you know, of being a man for about thirty years.
So now Lily is like rejecting everything to do with Einar.
She's like in Aar is a different is a man

(10:34):
and a different person. I'm a woman, and that means
nothing to do with in R can can be part
of my personality anymore. Um. For example, she had an
immediate distaste for smoking, Like as soon as she woke
up from her operation, she was like, smoking grows, Throw
all that away, even though I had smoked for years, Like,

(10:54):
throw that ship out. And she stopped painting because she
thought in Ours masculinity came out when he painted. He
was entirely a man when he painted, and so she
thought she wouldn't be any good at it because she
didn't have any of that masculine energy I guess left
in her perhaps or she also talked a lot about

(11:16):
being really scared that she would paint something as lily
and then people would compare it to a painting of
inn Ours and say she wasn't as talented as I.
In R was fascinating. It's it's very yeah again, just
just you've got to keep this in mind that it's
not just changing your appearance and your name. There's so
much more to it. And this is someone who's very

(11:36):
clearly having a real crisis. Of identity, who is so
having such a difficult time dealing with it that she
wants to, you know, erase whole parts of herself just
for being associated with her past life. That's I mean, man,
if you don't have empathy for that, I just I
just don't understand. Really, what a what a challenge? Yeah,

(11:59):
and how much even more lonely would you be? You
don't even get your past to comfort you. Right, you're
just literally like a newborn right in the world, but
you're in a grown body walking around being like, I
should know people, I should have a career, I should
have things already that I don't. I feel I don't

(12:19):
have anymore because there's no conversation around it. There's no
you know, mental health care equivalent. There's there's no process
for helping someone through this. And that's clearly so necessary
because it's it sucks that she felt like she needed
to disconnect from this entire past when that was that

(12:41):
was still a really cool skill that she had. You know, yeah,
I would. I wouldn't say. You know, she's worried about
being less talented than I are. It's like, well, maybe
you're more talented, right, Maybe maybe it's the same. It
doesn't really matter. It's just like this is this is
still part of You can change your identity and still
retain your skills and these sort of little things that

(13:01):
sort of make you who you are underneath all that.
But she felt like doing anything that Einar did just
made her in Are instead of Lily, So she was
just like, forget that. At the women's hospital, Lily realized
that her personality had undergone another shift when she saw
Kurt Verner Cross again. As i Are, she'd had no

(13:22):
problem talking to the doctor, but as Lily, she suddenly
felt breathless and fluttery and nervous and like submissive and
afraid to ask questions. It's kind of like that time
when Ininar was doing the ballet. We sort of run
against some of the gender stuff here again, Like she
wonders if the doctor is treating her differently than he

(13:42):
had treated in Are, so that she would get accustomed
to living as a woman. So is this another situation
where it's like, well, men are supposed to be this
and women are supposed to be this. So now that
I'm Lily, I I should be fluttery and submissive and
not know what questions to ask and and it kind
of just adds in. Now there's a layer of sexism.

(14:05):
Women are supposed to be this thing, and now I
have to be that thing too, now that you know,
I've realized that I'm a woman. Yeah, it's it was
you know, you know me, I'm not very submissive. So
certainly reading some of that, I was like, come on, now, Lily,
you don't have to be like that or whatever, but
you can you can read it, you know, as you

(14:26):
can see how desperate she was to disconnect from inn are.
I mean, she was willing to give up entire talents
that she had, so she so anything even if she knew, well,
you know not not all women are like that or whatever.
She just needed to get us far away from the
idea of being you know, anything like inn or anything

(14:50):
like masculine. That she wanted to be the complete stereotype
of of a woman, right because it was like almost
like more uh not validating, but like real, Like it
made it more real for you the observer than he
even did for her, even though I think it did
help her validate to herself, you know what I mean,

(15:13):
Because she had this idea of what a woman was,
and the idea was what she grew up learning in
this time period. I wonder if the doctor really was
talking to her differently, or if the doctor was like
I was legit talking to all the same way, but
you you just took it differently because you feel different.
It's hard to say, I mean speculation station, I would
say he might have done that because he might have

(15:34):
had the same binary idea of well, you're a woman now,
so I better treat you like I would treat a woman,
which is asking questions, you know what to talk about.
Think your head is full of nonsense. Isn't that validating
for you? You know? Or he just does it intrinsically
because that's again just his nature. And I wonder that too,

(15:56):
Like one, if you transition from male to female, do
you start to see people and I'm sure you do
unconsciously talk to you differently or treat you differently, you
know what I mean? Not like a conscious thing from
this doctor, like I'm going to treat you differently so
you'll feel more affirmed, but rather like when I saw you,
as I know, I saw a man, and I unconsciously

(16:18):
spoke to that BASI in differently than I speak to
this woman. Now that I'm seeing right, and you gotta wonder,
you know, if there's if there is a validation there.
You're like, ah, right, I'm experiencing sexism. This this person
you know, recognizes my my gender. Now, wow, weird world.

(16:40):
So part of the surgery that she was going to
be getting with Dr Kurt Warner Cross was an implant
of ovaries from a donor, and she was told that
because these ovaries were coming from a twenty seven year
old woman, that they would give her new youth and vitality.
And Lily would actually go on to protest that she
should have a differ birthday from ein Art because she

(17:02):
was younger biologically, and weirdly, the science here actually kind
of checks out. In Japan, scientists successfully transplanted ovaries from
young mice into old mice, and the old mice started
behaving more like younger mice and even living longer because
of the hormone functions from their new ovaries. That is

(17:23):
so strange to me. So ovaries could be the fountain
of youth. I mean, I'll get some put in if
it's gonna make me younger, So sounds great. So yeah.
At the hospital in Berlin, she underwent the surgery to
have these ovaries implanted, and Gerda obviously had to keep
the record of this period because Lily is sedated and

(17:45):
out of it and stuff. Right, we didn't get any
Lily under you know, sedation journal entries or she's like,
I'm in the bubble gum factories today and the pepper
trees told me I wish, Yeah, where's Lily's morphine diary?
That's the movie I'd like to see um. But yeah,

(18:06):
but Gerda's feelings about Lily's transformation, I think our best
left to her own words. She wrote in a letter, quote,
a human being who was born a man, who was
my husband, my friend, my comrade, has now become a woman,
a complete woman, and this human being was never intended

(18:26):
to be anything but a woman. Nothing more is left,
not a particle is left of my life's comrade and
fellow wayfarer inn Are. He is the dead brother of
Lily who now lives interesting. I mean, I think it's
cool that she's so clearly like this was always how

(18:46):
it was meant to be. But she's still really sad
that she lost someone she really cared about. Sure, sure,
that's understandable. It's a it's a little archaic. I mean
some of it in terms of, well, now she's a
complete you know, it's like, well that's not you know,
we know now that's not what difference between a woman.

(19:08):
But but it definitely you can you can kind of
see her working through it here in her own kind
of way. Yeah, and yeah, she was definitely having a
lot of questions were coming up for Gerda, you know,
much like Lily, wondering kind of how the outside world
would react, how they're old friends and family would react, um,

(19:29):
if they would accept Lily, if they you know all that.
She also kind of wondered like, well, now my husband
doesn't exist. There's a woman here. Now, how am I married?
How do we get divorced? You know, like, what's what's
going on? How does this work? And she also wrote
quote I cannot help thinking of the one person who

(19:51):
never really believed in ein are but only in Lily.
Lily's most intimate friend, Claude Provost. What will he think
when he sees her again? Interest So, like we all
know Claude is coming brought back for Lily. He's like,
I've been waiting for this. It's kind of easy to
lose Gerda in this story a little bit because Lily's

(20:11):
transformation obviously is so huge and and the you know,
really the anchor point of the reason we're telling this story.
But Gerda was super fascinating in her own right. Some
people speculated that Gerda was maybe possibly a lesbian or
at least bisexual, because her artwork often showed scenes of
lesbian erotica, but others think that maybe that's just how

(20:33):
she herself was seeing their sex life after Einar started
living as Lily. But one art historian, Andrea rig Carberg
in Copenhagen, thinks that Gerda was just as much of
a pioneer as Lily. Andrea says that Gerda basically revolutionized
the way women are being portrayed in art, because typically
women were painted by men, and therefore, you know, seen

(20:55):
through the male gaze, being presented as men see women
instead of as how women see themselves. So Andrea says,
quote she painted strong, beautiful women with admiration and identification
as conscious subjects rather than objects. Gerda's women were rarely
passively laying around in these paintings, but usually engaged in

(21:17):
performance or in play, or in seduction or sex. Even
more impressive about Gerda, Andrea says, quote, she got ahead
without trying to be more like the men to do it.
She loved makeup and fashion and didn't see why embracing
these traditionally feminine things should make her any less strong.
She wanted it all, So Gerda's pretty awesome. Yeah and yeah,

(21:41):
and Andrea was kind of like she was really interested
in the performance of gender even before inn Are was
starting to struggle with with her identity, because she, I mean,
right here she's saying it, she loved makeup and fashion,
and she was like, why should I perform more male
to be successful in a man's world. I should be
able to be a woman and do whatever the funk

(22:04):
I want. And I really think that's so interesting that
she was already thinking a lot about like, oh, we
put on these clothes, and we put on this makeup,
and it's this one thing, but there's this whole world inside,
you know what I mean that doesn't adhere to any
kind of binary and yeah, and the astonishment from Lily's

(22:25):
doctors when Gerda comes to see her, I think speaks
volumes of her character as well, because you know, speculation station,
we already kind of pulled into this. But we wondered
if the patients were had never married, or if usually
their spouses had left them or you know, it's like
you're freak, I'm leaving you kind of thing. Um. And

(22:45):
so that's why they were so like, oh, your wife's here, Okay,
well let's goal like extend her on up or whatever. Um.
But yeah, Gerda was cool. I mean she could tell
that this was not some delusion or like mental health
break or something like that. She's like, what I see
is someone I love in pain, and I don't want
them to be in pain anymore. And that's it. That's

(23:06):
kind of the thing that mattered to her. But yeah,
their relationship did change. You know, they had a very
We spoke a lot in Part one about their very
deep connection that they had when they got married and
for the many years that they were together. Um. But
after this operation, their relationship did change form somewhat. Um.

(23:28):
When Lily woke up from her surgery, you know, she's
out of it. She's in pain, like we are when
we're undergo some big medical operation. And Gerda wrote in
her letter that she held her quote like a little
sister in my arms. And later Lily also described the
two of them walking through town quote arm in arm
like affectionate sisters. So they're still really devoted to each other,

(23:51):
but clearly there's no there's no romance there anymore. It's
not the same kind of connection or not in love.
I mean, I I wonder, I'll pall into speculation station
here real quick. I wonder how much of that is
involved from Lily's perspective of I'm trying to leave everything
about in Are behind and one of those things. I mean,

(24:13):
if she's ditching the whole career, why not you know,
his marriage makes sense to me too. I mean, this
is someone I care about, but I aer was married
to Gerda. Lily is best friends with Gerda, and that's
kind of how it always was in their earlier years. Yeah,
Lily came out to hang and Gerda was like, oh man,

(24:34):
I feel so good when you're around another maybe because
also in Are uh described himself as kind of condescending
and like overly like masculine. Like I wonder if Gerda
wasn't just like, boy, I'm so glad that asshole like
a break for a while, and let's let me hang
out with Lily. It's like you know, the the same person,

(24:57):
but this one's nice right. Well, and I think too
that there's the kind of the homophobia we talked about
a little bit. Part one is that it's like, well,
women don't they don't sleep with women, they don't marry women,
they're not in love with women. I'm a woman, so
therefore there's nothing there. And maybe Gerda had some of
that too, was she's sort of like, well, you're a
woman now, so this doesn't work the same way. Yeah,

(25:20):
I don't know. That's why it's interesting that she did
paint lesbian erotica. I think a lot of her more
graphics scenes she painted for a memoir of Casanova's memoirs,
So we need to get to Cassanova. Um. So you know, Uh,
Sometimes I'm like, maybe the subject matter was just there
and she's just painting what was written, which was two

(25:43):
ladies doing it. Um. Or if yeah, again, if she
was sort of like, oh, now that Willy's here, when
when I and Aar and I are doing it, it's
almost as if, you know what I mean, there's some
kind of connection there. She just wanted to explore that
or something like that. But I don't know that she
herself had any same sex tendencies. Well, she was definitely

(26:06):
someone who was at the very least mentally exploring this
whole idea of gender, you know, in a very interesting way.
That seems again it's hard to say, I want, I
want to say it seems ahead of its time, but
then you learn things about like this institute, and you're like,
maybe maybe back then it was not quite as ahead

(26:27):
of its time as we thought it was, and all
that ship just got reset so that we're we're, you know,
we've been more catching up to that time at any rate.
So one day Lily received some mail and inside was
her new Danish passport with her new legal name, Lily

(26:48):
ils Elvinez. Elbe was her pseudonym, which she chose because
the hospital was situated near the river Elbe. Now this
was only two days before May one of nineteen, which
remember is when Lily had said, you know, if I
don't figure this out, I'm going to kill myself because
either Inar goes or we both go. But she wrote

(27:11):
quote Innar kept his promise. He was dead and she
was alive, Lily Elbe. This is just a big moment
for her to get her her passport with her name
on it, her picture changed like it was a really
big deal, a really big deal. Also, excuse me, it's
nineteen thirty and they're allowing people to get new passports

(27:35):
with their legal name and their correct gender on them.
Hello again, Hello, we were already there were we were
so close to getting there in and I'm so oh
this story makes me angry. I'm really like I've gotten
hot reading this because I cannot believe. Yeah, and they

(27:59):
were fully well mean to be. Oh, well, you're a
woman now, so obviously you need a new passport with
your new name and you look and everything like and
I don't know, you know in Denmark if that's changed
since then, or you know, they've kept that process the
same there. I only know what it is in America,
which has been very difficult to make changes there. It's

(28:20):
a good point, Like it's so mad. So at this point,
Gerda had to go back to Paris for work, so
she would leave Lily to continue to recover as well
as to prepare for her final surgery, which was to
remove her penis and scrotum. So they exchanged tons of
letters throughout this time, and in June she was fully

(28:41):
recovered from this last surgery and she was ready to
leave the hospital. Gerda came to pick her up, and
Lily had a really hard time. The hospital was like
this oasis, like everyone there knew her, they knew about her,
they knew how to talk to her. But now she
was going to go back into the you know, the
big wide world, and she'd have to face her old

(29:01):
circles again as this new person. She thought about never
returning to Denmark and never seeing her family again because
she was just so afraid of rejection. That this sounds
very familiar. I think, um and uh and definitely again,
just the it's it's so much more than than just
you know, representing yourself. They're they're all these existing connections

(29:25):
that you kind of have to deal with in one
way or another, right right, and and and lonely and
just feel her so alone, even with Gerda next to
her any friends, it really feels like she feels completely
like this island and she's so so scared that that people.
You know, she's thinking about everyone like her sister, her brother,

(29:47):
you know, friends from Danmark art dealers, you know, career
colleagues as well as dear friends and just sort of
I'm just have crazy scenarios play out in her head.
I'm sure about horrible things they could say or lovely
things they could say, and each of them being really terrifying, right,

(30:09):
And I mean, you know, just to I like to
try and find something relatable to myself because obviously I
can't relate directly to this experience. But like, I hate
being the new kid. Yeah, I hated it when I
was the new kid when I was a kid, and
I hate it now. I hate going to a new job,
and like I don't know anyone, and I've got to
like some people are into that. I can't stand it,
and it takes me a while to feel comfortable in

(30:31):
any setting with a bunch of people. I don't know.
Add on top of that everything that you just mentioned.
But she's going through, I can't imagine, you know, can
only begin to kind of try and understand what that
felt like. But it sounds like a real challenge, if
if not an all out nightmare internally, you know, because

(30:51):
no matter how it goes, you know, it might go great,
it might be totally fine and awesome, but uh, you know,
even still you're dealing with that storm in your head.
I think, yeah, for sure, And that that's what so
much of this story is about an internal storm, internal torment,
Like everyone outside doesn't know necessarily what's happening. But again,

(31:14):
this person was so tormented internally that they were willing
to kill their outside body, do you know what I mean?
Like they're like, I'm going to die now because I
just cannot deal with everything going on inside. People don't
even know. So yeah, Lily was kind of thinking about
all these different people from inn ours past that she
would want to see again or was afraid to see again,

(31:36):
or was wondering like how are they going to react
to me? Or are they going to still love me?
Are they still going to accept me? And she realized
that two faces just kept coming up for her, and
one of them was her Claude. Her Claude proposed our
dealer who would send flowers and was always so sweet
to her. And also Gerda's friend Fernando Porta, who we

(31:58):
talked about in the first episode, being this Italian guy
that they knew, and when they went to stay with him,
Lily had realized that Gerda was they were really vibing,
you know what I mean. So she's like, oh uh,
there might be something there, so Not long after she's
realizing this, Gerda wakes up from a short nap and
she saw, I had this beautiful dream you, Lily. You

(32:21):
and I were in Rome, And Lily asked Fernando was
with us, wasn't he, and put her arm around around Gerda,
and they both just realized that they weren't in love
with each other anymore, that they were maybe in love
with other people, or at the very least, that their
paths were not parallel anymore. They would be going off
in different directions soon. And that morning, Lily sent a

(32:41):
short note to Fernando saying, quote, dear friend, I will
only tell you that inn Aar is dead. I know
that Gerda has not yet told you anything about it.
Write her and do not neglect her, Lily. And then
they both went back to Denmark. A friend a girlfriend
right there like hello, asked my friend out. Finally, I

(33:04):
know she's not gonna say anything about this, so you
better come in and ask her because she's waiting. I mean,
that's great, and that's I think that just shows like
they're they maintained they do still love each other, you know,
they maintained this closeness. Obviously they'd spent most of their
lives together. At this point, they were there incredibly close friends. Yes,

(33:24):
and Gerda had even said, oh, I wonder what Claude's
going to think now that she's had her operation. And
now Lily's like, hey, Fernando, like ask out my friends.
So they clearly want the other one to be happy,
even if it's not with them. Yeah. Yeah, And they
both recognized that they would each themselves be happier with
someone else. Frantically. That's such love to me, Like what

(33:46):
what deep love and connection? I mean? Yeah, every once
in a while, I'm like, man, you know what I
need to I need to write to that guy and
tell him he's going to ask you out, because that's
how much I love you, I know, Right, Sometimes I
want to go up to these girls that talk to
you randomly in the grocery store, just ask him out

(34:07):
and make him feel so good. Don't make me feel
so good. They never do, but they're always like excuse me,
can you move your cart please? Or like, hey, that
was my last banana. You know I'm taking the last banana.
What kind of apocalyptic Kroger are you going to? Oh?
These days? By James All the Bananas all right, Well,

(34:33):
we're gonna go grab some bananas real quick and we'll
be right back out to this brief commercial break. Welcome
back to the show everyone. I hope you all got
a banana to eat, all right. So I Aar had

(34:57):
been really well known in Copenhay again, so Lily was
really extra nervous to be there. She was afraid people
would recognize her, and she was afraid people wouldn't recognize her.
She was worried what her sister would say when they
met again. But chief among her concerns was figuring out
how to divorce Gerda. In Denmark, it was required that

(35:18):
you had a year of separation before a legal divorce
would be granted, and then an additional year afterwards to
make an official which reminds me of our Lucy and
Desi episode when Lucy went ahead and divorced Desi Arnaz
one morning after they went out that night. Uh, just

(35:38):
to just to stick it to him, knowing full well
that when she saw him the next day went back
to his house, it would nullify the divorces. But she's like,
I didn't put all that paperwork together for nothing, she said,
I didn't want to waste all the legal fees that
so anyway, this was what was required in Denmark, and
Lily was determined not to have quote Gerda swindled out

(36:01):
of two years of her life. Um. And also they
didn't want to separate, they didn't want to not see
each other for two years. So a lawyer suggested that
they petitioned the King Christian the tent. So they had
a secret meeting with the King, which took less than
an hour, and by the end of it in October
of their marriage was dissolved. So even the king, I

(36:25):
mean even the King of Denmark is like, yeah, this
makes sense to me. I'm so mad well, and they
were even like two ladies presented themselves to the king.
So of course the king is like, well, obviously you
can't be married to a woman. What is this? So
Lily encouraged Gerda to head to Italy as soon as

(36:47):
possible to hook up with Fernando. She's like, get get
out there, you know, get you that Italian sausage. I
know you want it, go get it. But Gerda did
not leave just yet, because, like we said, she knew
that Lily was incredibly nervous to be in Copenhagen, so
she made sure to bring more and more of their

(37:07):
like old friends and acquaintances into their trusted circle of
people that knew about Lily, um, so that Lily wouldn't
be all alone, you know, when Gerda went off to Italy.
But while pretty much all of their women friends accepted
Lily and was like, cool, we'll we'll come by tomorrow
for a drink and see how you doing. Um, both

(37:27):
of them were really heartbroken because I in ours male
friends completely refused to associate with Lily. Lily wrote that
they kind of told Gerda or Lily that they felt
they'd be betraying inn Are by accepting Lily, that they
respected iin are too much to be kind to Lily.

(37:47):
Oh God, see this is that and this is that
sensitivity that you know. Fragility is really the word where
it all starts to break down, you know, where it
seems like everything's fine, and then some guys come in
and they're like, whoa, WHOA. I can't do that. I'm
not willing to change. I'm not willing to think differently
about something. I have an established thought pattern, an established relationship,

(38:10):
and by god, I'm a man and I'm not about
to change that right, And it's so it's so weird
because one of the things that makes her so nervous
to see her family and friends is that she feels
like in our she's afraid they're going to see Lily
as in and ours murderer. Um. And so this kind
of I feel backs up that notion for her that

(38:32):
these male friends are like, you killed my friend. Basically
he's not here because of you, instead of being able
to see that they're the same person, which I mean,
you know, Lily herself has put it that way to
some degree. Definitely, this is a you know, in our
is dead, in has gone and I have taken the

(38:52):
body now. Um. But but it just shows the complicated
nature of the of the whole transition, and I don't know,
just that unwillingness to to to transition with her. You know,
you're like, okay, well cool, now Lily's here, Now Lily's

(39:12):
my friend. Sure that's you know, no one was murdered. Yeah. Well,
and it was interesting to me too to see that
because of course, now you know, we're seeing a lot
of women coming out as turfs where they're kind of
like a trans woman invalidates me. Biological cis woman somehow.

(39:34):
I once had a conversation with somebody where I was like,
this makes me feel like shipped to say, but I
got really mad when Caitlyn Jenner was named the woman
of the Year for Like Times Woman of the Year.
This was a few years ago. I got really mad
about it, and I was like, maybe I'm like trans
exclusionary and some kind of bitch or something, because I'm like,
you don't deserve that, m But my and I told

(39:55):
my friend about this because we were having a conversation
at work about this kind of situous actuality and stuff
like that, and I was like, I feel like shit
that I just so mad about this. I don't know
why it's upsetting me, but it felt like wrong to
give it to her, and she she said, um, well,
what if it had been Laverne Cox And I was like, oh,

(40:16):
that'd be fine. And I realized, just because Caitlyn Jenner sucks,
not not because Caitlyn Jenner is not a woman, it's
just that she's terrible. So it made me feel a
lot better. Thank you to my friend for helping me
feel better. So then Lily went to go see her
sister for a few days, which of course caused her
a lot of turmoil, and she says her sister was

(40:40):
kind but did struggle to accept her um like she had.
The sister had put in ours paintings all over her house.
Lily called it a museum to in our and she
would kind of be like, don't you see what we've
lost now that in ars gone talent? You know, don't
be mad if I can't call you Lily right away,
and you know, like stuff like that. And so she

(41:01):
she writes about being very calm and as patient as
possible for a few days while her sister's kind of
working through her own very complicated emotions UM. At one point,
her sister did call her inn are and Lily wrote,
I felt then as if I ought to die. So
just again, when we talk about something being triggering, it's

(41:22):
not like some simple laughable feeling. It really is sometimes
like I would love to jump out a window because
you just said that, I mean something triggering is this
is a psychological term that's been like really grossly co
opted and overused because being triggered or something being triggering,

(41:42):
it's not about being upset. It's about having an instance,
you know, in your past or in yourself that one
thing can bring up a very serious psychological struggle. Uh.
And and it's and it's not disrupt everything about your day.

(42:04):
It's not. Just like I was pissed about that for
about fifteen minutes and then I moved on, like that's
not it. And again we're talking about somebody who's like
especially feeling like totally invalidated as a woman if you say, hey,
mr or something, you know, and so you're you're basically
saying she doesn't exist. And so she's like, well, then

(42:26):
I'll go jump out of a window so that I
really want to exist, you know what I mean. Like,
it's just really hard for her to hear her sister
not quite co and with her on it right away. Um.
And she admitted that she did not make it easy
on her sister because her sister was really longing for
her brother. You know, she's talking a lot about childhood
memories with I R And everything they used to do

(42:48):
together and all this stuff, and so she was looking,
you know, Lily is like I can see her looking
at me, searching for I are. And she wrote, quote,
whenever I show myself by my character and by the
way in which I spoke, in which I moved in
which I thought I veiled completely the character of ein Are.

(43:09):
He was ingenious, sagacious and interested in everything, a reflective
and thoughtful man, and I was quite superficial, deliberately so
for I had to demonstrate every day that I was
a different creature from him, that I was a woman,
a thoughtless, flighty, very superficially minded woman, fond of dress

(43:30):
and fond of enjoyment. Yes, I believe, even childish. And
I can say it calmly now. All this was certainly
not merely farcical acting. It was really my character, untroubled, carefree, illogical, capricious.
That's so, that's so interesting, And you know, I think

(43:51):
about the more current discourse, which is, you know, again
not that I was a man and now I am
a woman in r and Lily kind of seemed to
go through. But I have always been a woman my
whole life. All I'm changing is my presentation, and that
seems so much healthier than what Lily is going through here,

(44:12):
which is, you know, I have to I have to
bury everything that was inn Are so that I can
be this new person now. And you can see the
struggle there with her sister too, saying, you know, yeah,
I really miss who you were. That was the person
I grew to love my whole life that I grew
up with. UM. And you know, so you don't want

(44:34):
to invalidate her feelings the sister because that that that's difficult.
You know, you can't just say why don't you just
smile and go with it, because she's got her own
process to work through. How she goes through that process
and how, you know, recognizing what's affecting Lily is important.
And eventually by the end of her trip there after

(44:54):
she spent like a few days with her sister and
by the end her sister was like, I'm with it now.
I accept you. You're my sister, you know. They she
was cool, but it was a hard few days for
Lily and her sister to kind of talk. I think
they had one big fight where her sister's like, well,
you've you know, fucked everything up and inn ores better,

(45:17):
you know, like she was really having a just a
really hard time. That's when she called her inn are
and that's when Lily was like, I felt like I
ought to die because they probably because of multiple triggers
in that conversation. UM. But fortunately by the end, the
sister was like, we're good, good, I love you. You're
still in my family and I want to be in
your family, so that that is nice, right, She's feeling

(45:42):
a little more comfortable probably at this point. And then
right around this time an article was published outing the
truth about in R and Lily, and now Lily obviously
did not feel safe in Copenhagen anymore. She wanted to
go back to Germany, but her brother invited her to
stay with him in Judeland, so Lily traveled to her

(46:03):
brother's home and Gerda left for Italy and Fernando Porta,
Lily's brother and sister in law treated her lovingly and
pampered her so that she regained a sense of safety
and well being, and after a month or so, she
returned to Copenhagen. That's when her friend and the editor
of her memoir, Ernst Heartburn, started collecting her letters and

(46:26):
diary entries to turn into this book, and Gerda came
back from Italy radiantly happy, all set to Mary. Fernando
Porta and told Lily that her new home in Italy
would always be Lily's home as well, and that she
felt that Lily was both her sister and kind of
her grown up daughter, and that Fernando would welcome her

(46:47):
as his daughter too, And Lily wrote, quote how happy
these words made me. I mean again, just real love,
real love right there. And She's like and I can
totally see why she kind of saw as a daughter.
A lot of people talk about Lily being and she
herself said she is a bit childish because she was new,

(47:07):
you know, she felt like a new person. So she
just didn't really know how to go about the world.
She didn't how to be a woman in the world,
I guess, or or whatever. So she she seemed very
innocent and naive about a lot of things, which I mean,
you know, being a woman in the world. I mean,
I'm sure as much now in that time period, uh
is something that, as I understand it, you learned to do, yeah,

(47:29):
in a lot of ways. So she's kind of starting fresh.
Makes sense, It's true, And and being naive is not
a bad quality for a woman, I guess in this
particular time period, it does inspire a man to want
to protect you. Don't go learn in maths who will
marry you? Then? I like that Gerda goes to Italy

(47:52):
and comes back glowing. She's like, oh sure, I'll go
down and spend a couple of weeks in Sorrento with
Fernando Parte. Oh wow, Gerda, you're glowing. You look as
if you've been on a sexual adventure across a son
and sex soaked sojourn to testing. Yeah. But Lily, at

(48:13):
this point she needs money, right she everybody needs money,
income money. Oh yeah, money, it's sort of about that part.
So an art dealer friend arranged an exhibition of some
of in Oars paintings which were in storage. Okay, and
this wasn't unusual because I R and Gerda Again, these
are famous artists, so they were frequently exhibited. But this

(48:34):
time they put out a story that they were exhibiting
these works to raise funds to pay for in Oars
hospital bills, because he had been languishing in a hospital
in Germany for a long time with this big illness.
That's kind of how they were explaining the fact that
no one was seeing in Ar anymore. But you know,
this this article had come out that was kind of like, hey,

(48:54):
this is what we think the sources say, blah blah blah,
And it was really probably a TMZ type snarky, sort
of sarcastic article. So it caused all those old rumors
from like nineteen twelve to fly around again about Gerda's
model being her husband in a dress and who's this
lady and just all this kind of hurtful ship and

(49:16):
so nobody bought a single picture at this exhibition, and
Lily is really upset because she needs income. She knew
she had friends and family who would support her, but
she didn't want to be dependent on them. You know,
She's like, I need to fucking I'm a grown woman
and I gotta be out here handle in my business.
So like one of her friends was like, hey, why
don't you just dress up like in R and show

(49:37):
up and then you'll, you know, put paid to all
these rumors or whatever. But Lily and Gerda were horrified
by this suggestion, which I think goes to show you,
like Einar could dress like Lily and not feel gross
in those clothes. I guess it is a better is
the best word I can think of. But Lily putting
on in are was like, no, absolutely not, yeah, because

(49:59):
Lily is who she is, right and to put in
are on I think would almost be like a regression
for it. She'd be like going back and undoing all
this surgery she'd undergone and everything. And it's like saying
that either that that Lily is a costume to yes, totally,
whichever person I dress up as, that's the person I am.
And that's not the case. Yeah, absolutely So. Then another

(50:23):
friend of theirs, who was an editor at a newspaper,
was like, Lily, let me write an article about you,
a real article, your own words, describing your tormented existence
as inn are and what you went through in these
German hospitals. Let me put it in. Let you tell
your own story, don't let this article tell it for you.

(50:43):
And at first Lily was really terrified to give this
account of her life. But her friend told her that
a well known painter like in r couldn't just disappear.
It was time for the public to know the truth.
And more than that, this German doctor had achieved a
real medical miracle. Shouldn't everyone know what he'd accomplished. That
was smart because Lily was like super obsessed with Kurt

(51:05):
barn Across, and she was like, I I am the
embodiment of his life's work, you know what I mean.
So that was that was probably really what got her
to do it, and it did. She consented and the
article was published at the beginning of March. And now
Lily was afraid to go out because she thought everyone
would recognize her and that everyone would know like she

(51:25):
was scared to be called an impersonator or afraid people
would call attention to her or shout her name in
the street. Being mis gendered wasn't just about feeling triggered
by her old pronouns. She felt that it invalidated her
as a woman. As we've talked about. She wrote, quote,
other women could be ugly, could commit every possible crime. I, however,
must be beautiful, must be immaculate, else I lost every

(51:48):
right to be a woman. Yes, as you said earlier,
it's almost as if she's like, I need to go
from to a complete one eight as womanly as I
can possibly get, as stereotypically womanly as I can possibly get,
or else it doesn't mean anything. But she realized no

(52:11):
one recognized her, no one was calling her out in
the street and or running after her. Any of these
horrible fears she had. None of that was happening. When
she went out. She even bought the paper that had
the article in it and then sat on the tram
and read it, and no one realized that it was her,
even though she was wearing the same coat and hat

(52:31):
that she was wearing in the picture in the article
of her. So after that she was really reassured. She
was like, Okay, I'm safe. I feel good, and she
started kind of enjoy going out and kind of getting
a kick out of people not knowing who she was. Um,
she started going to the gallery where in ars pictures
were hanging every day, and after this article came out,
they were like crowds of people going to the to

(52:53):
this exhibition hoping to catch a glimpse of Lily, like
they were hoping she'd come out and and show herself,
I guess, And so she went to So Lily went
to kind of see that and was sort of getting
getting a kick out of that because she was there,
but no one knew it. And one lady even whispered
to her, tell me, miss, don't you think that the
lady over there with the large feet and the necktie

(53:14):
who looks like a man is Lily Elbe And Lily replied, yes,
most decidedly, that is she, And every picture sold amazing
which I think is so interesting that an article came
out being like, hey, guess what Lily il might be

(53:35):
in our an address or whatever is so gross and rude,
and people were like afraid to buy the pictures. They
were like controversial. But as soon as she came out
with her own story and was like, this is the
real situation, people were like, Oh, I better go buy
that painting. You're telling me that an article in the
media can influence people's ideas of social issues. It's almost

(54:01):
as if the framing of the story really matters to
how you see it yourself. What weird? Right? Huh? Somebody
ought to put that to good use or evil use?
I suppose they could do. But who would do that?
Probably not I know. But who would do that? Who
would do that? Who would deliberately put harm into the
world for their own profit? Speaking of we have a

(54:22):
commercial break, Yes we do, so we will be right back.
Welcome back to the show everyone. So now Lily's paintings
are selling and she's feeling good about her place in
the world. She's comfortable, she's established, and Gerda is like, okay,
you're good here, girlfriend, I got you. I'm glad you're feeling,

(54:45):
all right, come visit me anytime. I'm going back to
Italy and Fernando, because of course I'm going back to
Italy and Fernando to first chance. All right, I'm gonna
go sleep with my hot Italian man. And so Lily's
regular doctor told her that she was healthier and healthier
and she could probably start painting again. But this really
upset Lily. She was like, don't you see in in

(55:08):
R is the painter, not me, Like Lily doesn't paint.
So her friend and editor Ernst told her that she
didn't have to renounce everything about in Are to be herself.
He told her, quote, you are a woman. Sometimes you
were afraid of saying that because it's completely naked and brutal,
But all truth, in fact is brutal. Much of it

(55:29):
is even shameless, and there are very few people who
can understand and endure the most intimate and perfect shame.
That is the shame of shamelessness. Yeah, which I think
is kind of like we were just talking about that
she doesn't have to give up anything about herself. It's
like Ernst understands even better than she does that she's

(55:51):
always been Lily, So whatever in in are was Lily
can also be because Lily has always been there. Yeah, exactly,
Like he's kind of telling her living unapologetically as your goal.
You're still apologizing to yourself, if not to anyone else,
for who you used to be. And you need to
be able to embrace your full self. You didn't necessarily

(56:14):
used to be someone different. No, yeah, he's like present differently. Yeah,
you belong to yourself. Everything you are belongs to you.
You can. You can use it or lose it however
you will. But don't lose it because you think it
means you're not you. He said. Quote this new country
of the soul is lying dormant within you, and whether
you like it or not, it will go on expanding.

(56:37):
And this advice worked. Lily takes on an art student
and begins to paint again. I think that's awesome that
she had such a good friend like be able to
say that to her. I mean, she's got an enormously
awesome support system here, really wonderful people who are totally accepting.

(56:57):
Man again feels at times it feels better than now
in some ways, just reading it and reading other things
and hearing stories from people I know. Now you know
it's very frustrating, it is, but it's sort of that
thing about progression where the pendulum sort of swings, Yeah,

(57:19):
the pendulum, I know, but you can kind of see like, oh,
this was such a new thing, people are like, oh, yeah, okay, sure,
I mean, what it's new whatever. And then if if
kind of like now more and more people are feeling
comfortable to say I'm non binary or I'm transgender, and
it's making some people think because of the Internet, that

(57:40):
oh everyone's transgender now and it's not cool to be
siss anymore. And oh my god, were like a second
class you know what I mean, And so you swing
back to being more intolerant than you might have been
if it felt like a smaller population. Well, yeah, we
talked about it that in Part one, about how transitioning
back then when you've got to worry about all thirty

(58:00):
people that you know, versus now where it's like I've
got eleven Facebook friends and I have to deal with
all those relationships, um and and yeah, similarly, like we're
talking about with the media, there's now there's people, there's
people being outrageous about it that it's just like the
downfall of society. Who will probably never encounter a transgender

(58:22):
person in their lives, you know, and if they did,
they probably wouldn't even know it. You know. It's just absurd,
uh to see that pendulum swing back, because it's so unnecessary,
and if they do meet a transgender person in their life,
it won't affect them at all. Right, what's it going
to do to you? Nothing anyway, anyway, the pendulum. So

(58:47):
then Lily receives a letter from her friend Claude Provost,
who's obsessed with Lily, I know, and he told her
he was going to be in Copenhagen soon and he
would love to see her, and so they spent a
whole week together. She took him around Copenhagen and they
talked about old times in France and memories they had together,

(59:10):
and she was just so so happy with Claude. And
Claude told her, you know, you're a grown woman, but
I also see you as kind of childlike and innocent,
sort of naive. You need someone to be your protector
and take care of you. And she was like, oh,
don't worry, I'm gonna go visit Gerda in Italy. And
then I'm thinking I'm gonna go back to the women's
hospital in Berlin for a few months, and just I

(59:31):
was so comfortable there, you know, I'm just going to
hang out there. But he offered her a different path.
He was working as a diplomatic consular for some time
at this point he was about to be transferred from
Paris to Turkey, and he took Lily's hands and said,
will you come with me? Will you marry me? Lily?
Will you be my wife? And she instantly said yes,

(59:55):
which she kind of describes as like she didn't realize
she was going to say yes. It just came to
her lips without thought. She was just like, of course
I will. But all that emotion that was he was
stirring up within her was really kind of freaking her out. Um,
she didn't really know why, but she's like, I really
feel like I have to go visit Dr Kurt von
Across in Germany first. Before I can really say yes

(01:00:16):
or no, I need to go see him. The way
she wrote about it was that he he kind of
birthed her. He's her creator, quote unquote, so only he
has the right to dispose of me. Is sort of
how she talked about it. Interesting, Um, which I think
is interesting, But I think it's actually more that once
she got there, she realized what she was really looking for,
and it wasn't permission from Dr Kurt, right, because Lily

(01:00:39):
didn't realize it until she got to the hospital and
was standing right there in front of the doctor. But
what she wanted was to be able to get pregnant.
She had this belief that a quote real woman was
able to give birth, and she got a little obsessed
with the idea of becoming again another quote, a complete woman,

(01:01:00):
which she had mentioned in those words before she wrote
to her friend Ernst quote, it is not with my brain,
not with my eyes, not with my hands that I
want to be creative, but with my heart and with
my blood. The fervent longing in my woman's life is
to become the mother of a child. So Lily asked
doctor Kurt if he would give her an operation that

(01:01:22):
would enable her to have children. Only a few weeks before,
Dora Richter, who we talked about an episode one, was
the first woman to have a sexual confirmation surgery. She
had successfully undergone since then a full vagin of plastic
So doctor Kurt agreed to implant a uterus in Lily
and construct a vaginal canal, and then she felt like

(01:01:44):
she would be able to marry Claude, which once again
we come back to some inherent sexism and and binary
ideas of what makes a man what makes a woman.
And Lily has, you know, probably her whole life, believe
that a woman has babies that's what makes a woman,

(01:02:06):
and wants to yeah. Yeah, And and and that she
couldn't marry someone she loved unless she was capable of
giving him children. And that's not to say that, you know,
that's not valid, that that there are women who feel like,
you know, what I need to do is give birth,

(01:02:26):
you know, and and trans women to who think that's
very important at this point, Uh, it's it's not been done.
It's it's a very theoretical kind of concept. But she
feels very strongly about it and is willing to take
that risk. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But unfortunately, what doctors did

(01:02:46):
not realize at this time was that the immune system
does not like strange objects or organs in the body.
You have to really prepare your body to accept a
new organ, and you have to have us more advanced
medicine than they had at that time. An anti rejection
medicine wasn't around until the nineteen seventies, and the first

(01:03:07):
successful organ transplant would not happen until nineteen eighty, so
this is obviously many years before that. Lily had her
uterus implanted in June of ninety one, but her body
rejected it, and she spent months in the hospital, growing
weaker and weaker, um with infections and different things, and

(01:03:28):
Gerda sent flowers every day. Claude sent letters telling her
he was patiently waiting for her in Turkey whenever she
could come join him. But in September, Lily's heart failed.
She passed away on September at forty eight years old.
In some of her last letters, she wrote that I, Lily,

(01:03:50):
am vital and have a right to life. I have
proved by living for fourteen months. It may be said
that fourteen months is not much, but they seemed to
me like a whole and happy human life. And near
the end she sent a letter to her sister saying,
now I know death is near. Last night I dreamt
about mother. She took me in her arms and called

(01:04:12):
me Lily, and father was also there, which is beautiful
because her parents had already passed away by the time
she was Lily, so she would never know how they
would except or reject her. So I think it's lovely
that she had a a dream that they they said
they were her family. Yeah, I mean, whether you see

(01:04:34):
that as you know, a real vision or just as
her sort of like really accepting herself and believing that,
you know, people who loved her would accept her true
self too. Either way, it's it's beautiful. And when she
stayed with her brother, she was there for like a month,
and he was like, you know, you haven't gone to
see our parents gravestones yet, do you want me to

(01:04:57):
take you? And at that time she was like, I
know that I don't really have any parents or family.
They're all in ours family, and so I don't really
have any parents. You know. The closest I've got is
Dr Kurt barn Across, And so it's it was just
interesting that at that point she didn't see her family
as even hers, And so I'm just very glad that

(01:05:20):
near the end she did kind of see it that way,
like painting, like, you know, she felt like she had
to get far away from anything that was in ours,
not realizing that she was, you know, Lily all along
and these things were important to her, yeah, or that
she didn't feel like she had a right to anything
whereinar had right. Um, I think it's part of it too.

(01:05:41):
It's not only like I need to push it away,
but also it's not mine. I that's not me. It
doesn't belong to me, you know what I mean? Just
very complicated stuff. And it's complicated too because I I
part of me is like, well, it's amazing that she
felt so strongly she was willing to take this risk,

(01:06:02):
she accepted the results in a way that she wasn't
going to live through it and felt like, you know what,
but I lived the life I wanted to live, and
that's really wonderful. I also feel like that her very
strong belief that a woman to be a woman, a
complete woman, as she said, you need to have a
uterus and be able to give birth and that, you know,

(01:06:25):
kind of archaic notion is sort of what killed her
in a way too. Um, which is sad because it
wasn't It was not her being a transwoman that led
to her death. It was her rigid beliefs about what
a woman needed to be. Yeah. When I wonder too,
if it came up that She's like, I really I
want to have sex with Claude, and I don't know

(01:06:48):
how because they don't have a vaginal canal. How can
we do it? The only way I can think of
is seems gay, do you know what I mean? But
Dora had had the vaginal canal, just didn't go with
the uterus, right, you know, so you're so right, So
we could have gone with that, She could have gone
with that, but she felt like, again, a complete woman

(01:07:11):
can give birth, and we know cis and trans women
who are complete women who cannot give birth or choose
not to. And that's, you know, again, that's a newer mindset,
I guess, um certainly again, very rigid of her to
believe back then. Well, and it's interesting too because the
there's a postulation that because of the shriveled ovaries that

(01:07:34):
they found that she maybe had I think it was
Klagenfelter syndrome um, which is where you have an extra
X chromosome and so you have like smaller testicles and
you're usually infertile. Interesting, um, it's sort of a similar
as the Turner syndrome for women, where they have an
extra chromosome and you might never know in your whole

(01:07:55):
life that you have it until you try to get
pregnant and you can't introduced mainly and in for a
ttility thing. So I find it interesting that Einar was
not less of a man because they didn't have children.
But but Lily would be less of a woman if
she couldn't, you know. Fascinating. Well, meanwhile, Gerda is living

(01:08:17):
it up with her new husband Fernando in Morocco, but
in nineties six he had burned through all of her savings.
They divorced, so so much for this Italian lover, like
it's a good time now, but he's he's going to
use all that money. He sure did, man, Fernando. So

(01:08:37):
Gerda moved back to Denmark and she tried to have
more art shows, but by then the Art Deco style
was falling out of fashion and her work really didn't
sell very well. She slid further into obscurity and poverty,
selling hand painted Christmas cards to survive only a few
weeks after Nazis invaded Denmark in ninety Gerda died with

(01:08:58):
little fanfare. Yeah, it's not it's just now really that
people are starting to appreciate who she was in her
lifetime as he as an artist and as a woman
and as the wife of of Lily Elba. You know,
she did not get her do in her time. But
Gerda was cool, all right. Now, there's another aspect we

(01:09:21):
can talk about with uh Lily's death, that she died
when she did because shortly after that, which was of
course in the Nazis came to power and started, for example,
they destroyed the hospital where she had been getting her
surgeries and her treatment, and they had, like you said,

(01:09:43):
that list of names, and they went and they tracked
these people down. So it's entirely possible and maybe even
very likely. I'm sure, I guess this has to exist
in speculation station, but that the Nazis would have killed her.
She might have only lived a couple more years if
that had not. So there's, you know something, if you're

(01:10:06):
looking for a silver lining here, there might be something
historically beautiful about the fact that she kind of got
to go out more on her own terms, or at least,
you know, through her own decisions, rather than the worst
people of all time coming in and quite possibly killing
her in a very horrible way. Yeah. Yeah, So silver
lining is that she didn't get killed by Nazis. I

(01:10:30):
don't know, but yeah, that's a it's a bummer of
a silver line. It's a gray lining. Could have that
sparkled to it. It's a very stormy gray lining. Oh well,
there's an upper for you. I know. I wish there
was a like, a yeah, more bright note to end
on I suppose, But I guess you could say her

(01:10:51):
her legacy has certainly echoed through history. You know, her
book is incredibly important to understanding her journey and the
journey of many who came after her. Right. Well, look,
she died, you know, when she was too young. That
that is tragic, but her life was remarkable, and like
you said, it's an education still to this time. I mean, look,

(01:11:13):
I I learned so much just from doing this episode.
How people are learning something similar from listening to it
if we managed to, you know, make any sense out
of it. But um, but about the trans experience, the
evolution of the trans experience, about history in general. There
I learned a lot about history right here. Um and uh,

(01:11:36):
and I'm really fascinating. I think she gave a those
memoirs really gave us a really valuable perspective and throughout
her struggles she got to live a pretty doe past
life and she got to live us herself, you know,
for for for some time, and she had a lot
of love in her life, which I think is so

(01:11:56):
wonderful to find out. It could have gone so differently.
I could have left her and thought that was so weird,
and all her friends could have abandoned her. She could
have never found Kurt Vona Cross. I mean, it could
have ended so so differently long before any of this,
you know, anyone could have just like shamed her into
living as I and are throughout the rest of her life.
She might have lived at ninety years old as I

(01:12:18):
aren't been miserably unhappy the whole time, right, or thrown
herself into a river as she planned in right. So yeah,
I think that's valuable to learn that your love and
support can literally save someone else's life. Absolutely. I really
do hope that you all took something, you know, even
close to what I took from this story through our
telling of it, because it's really fascinating. Um, But please

(01:12:41):
let us know what you did. Think Again, we said
this last time, but I'm I'm so interested in feedback
from this one. Um. Such a fascinating story to me,
so please reach out. Of course, you can get us
romance at iHeart media dot com right or on social
media Twitter and Instagram. I'm at Dianamite Boom and I'm
at a great It's Eli and the show is at

(01:13:01):
ridic Romance and we're gonna be coming back again next
week with another crazy episode. Oh we didn't even mention
this episode is fifty two, that is halfway through the
years it is. Well, we're gonna pop bottle of champagne tonight.
I think we've still got some left over from our
New Year's party of January of So congratulations to us.

(01:13:24):
Y'all go fix yourselves a drink in our honor um
and uh and have fun this weekend. We will see
you all at the next episode. Cannot wait. I love
you by bye bye, so long friends, It's time to go.
Thanks so listening to our show. Tell your friends names
uncle Sandance to listen to our show Ridiculous. Well Nance