Smith, Mark Ethan, 1940-

A biological female who lives as a person without regard to sex, Mark Ethan Smith was born Marcia Ellen Bazer on March 13, 1940. His mother was a schoolteacher and his father an upholsterer. He graduated from Carle Place High School (Carle Place, N.Y.) and left home at 17. During the next twenty-five years Mark Smith married four times (one daughter was raised by Smith's parents, the other given up for adoption), and traveled widely. He lived for a time--often hand to mouth--in Honduras and Afghanistan, where he studied medicine and volunteered at a hospital in Kabul. He took the name Marcia Ellen Smith upon his first marriage in 1960; in September 1981, he changed his name to Mark Ethan Smith. In 1979 he earned a bachelor's degree in New York State with a major in science.

In 1982 Smith began work as an aircraft electrician apprentice at the Naval Air Rework Facility in Alameda, Calif. Although identified on the application as a woman, Smith was permitted, at the time of conditional appointment, to use the name Mark E. Smith. He was discharged and subsequently filed suit against the Navy and with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, alleging unlawful discrimination. Smith was the editor of Nontraditional News, published by the Foundation for Role Equity Education, for which he also served as secretary/treasurer.