"Beautiful Daughters"
More about our subjects

Lynn Conway is a famed pioneer of microelectronics chip design. She did most of her work as a female, living in total stealth for decades because of her earlier experiences at IBM in the 60’s as a young man. Despite her successes as a computer designer there, she was ostracized and forced out when she began to transition. Fully transitioned and with a new identity, she started all over again as entry level programmer and in several years became world renowned in the computer industry. Today she is Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science emerita at the University of Michigan and lives in rural Michigan with her husband Charlie. Lynn has dedicated herself to helping the cause of young trans women, and to spreading information that counters the many negative media stereotypes of transsexual people.
Lynn is the first truly successful trans woman to come out of long-term stealth and reveal her story – a story that will give hope to young transsexuals and will help parents see possibilities for happiness for a transsexual child.



Calpernia Addams grew up in a conservative Baptist family in the South and as a shy soft-faced boy she had a rough go of it.
Calpernia’s father encouraged him endlessly to buck up and be a man until he finally joined the Marines and became a field nurse where his softness was acceptable. Calpernia left the army, transitioned to become a woman and worked as a showgirl near the marine base. In a tragic story documented in her book and in the movie, Soldier’s Story, Calpernia’s US Army boyfriend, was brutally murdered by his bunk mates for the sin of dating a woman like Calpernia. She grieved his death but ultimately became a writer, producer and director, espousing the cause of Trans women. Cal’s conservative religious mother remains close to her but suffers her daughter’s transsexualism to this day causing Cal continuing anxiety. Their visits are regular but painful. Cal now lives in Los Angeles but is afraid to tell the men she dates that she’s a trans woman.


Valerie Spencer

Valerie grew up in South Central Los Angeles where the understanding of gender differences was nonexistent. Valerie didn’t stay in school for long because for her that was a place of terrifying abuse and violence. She never understood the beatings she received for years from her father but now knows it was his deep disappointment that his little boy was really a little girl.
Valerie developed her personality and articulateness to learn to live with the harsh reality of transgender hate all around her. She was a woman who did not want to be categorized but her world refused and considered her a freak. Today, at 37, Valerie lives in Los Angeles with her mother surrounded by a community of family and friends. She says, “ I have issues like any other woman, I am unmarried, still single with no prospects and not making all the money I want, but when I look things over, I think I’ll keep the life I have.”
Valerie is dedicated to her work promoting public policy for HIV research, representing Transgender persons and lecturing on a wide range of issues for the GBLT community in Los Angeles.



Leslie Townsend, until she was 18, was a delicate young man who secretly liked other boys and who made his father crazy. When Dad finally found out his 18-year-old son wanted to be a girl he told his son that if he did this thing, he would never find a man to accept her as a woman, never have sex and her life would be a total failure. Leslie left home, went underground and, as she herself describes it, crawled through the gutter of the gay, trans underworld. It was her life’s journey to prove her father wrong becoming first a woman, then a beautiful woman, then a model and finally working as a high class escort. She slept with hundreds of men and none of them ever knew. She married briefly and for 20 years she lived in total stealth. Her involvement in the Vagina Monologues and this film marks her decision to come out and tell the world who she is. To her it’s a plea for acceptance of other trans women struggling to find their way in a society that is slow to accept them.

Back to the introduction

Click here for photos and bios of all the V-Day cast members.

For more information contact:
Josh Aronson - Aronson Film Associates
phone: 212-253-6941 - fax: 212-253-8863