Both parents were killed in a car accident in August 1968, when Raj was sixteen, and the five children (three brothers and one sister) moved into four different homes until they respectively reached 18 or 21 years of age.
[2] Raj graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in psychology from Carleton University in 1975, and moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, following two friends, both trans women activists who had been involved in the Association of Canadian Transsexuals (A.C.T.)
Raj continued his activism by starting a petition to get Ontario to cover sex-reassignment surgery through the provincial health insurance plan, OHIP—an effort that was unsuccessful at the time.
The first issue of Gender Review was published in June 1978 and included a story on "Transsexual Oppression" concerning Montrealer Inge Stephens; information about transsexual resources; a listing of publications by Dr. Harry Benjamin and Dr. Charles L. Ihlenfeld; a bibliography of books and articles by and about trans people; and news items about Mario Martino, trans woman Canary Conn's appearance on the Phil Donahue show, and other notices.
[7] Raj's work, based in Toronto, Canada, joined that of Mario and Becky Martino's Labyrinth Foundation's Counseling Services (Yonkers, NY); Johnny A's F2M (meetings in New York, NY; Rites of Passage newsletter out of Tenafly, NJ); Jude Patton's Renaissance group in Santa Ana, CA; and Jeff S.'s group in Southern California.
[8] Raj had planned to partner with Mario Martino (also known as Angelo Tornabene) in Yonkers, NY to research, develop, and market a penile prosthetic device as an alternative to phalloplasty.
Most of its subscribers were American, but there were also trans men from Canada, Great Britain, Europe, Australia and New Zealand who eagerly paid to get the sought-after news, information and resources.
[13] Between 1990 and 1999, Raj was not publicly active as a trans activist, opting to mainstream into cisgender, straight society for those nine years in hopes of healing from massive burnout.
In November 2002, Raj started working as a mental health counselor at Sherbourne Health Centre (SHC) in Toronto, providing individual, couple and family therapy for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, transgender, gender-questioning and sexually-questioning clients and their loved ones, and also co-facilitated SHC's "Gender Journeys" (a psychoeducational group for people considering transitioning to their identified gender) from 2006 to 2013.
Rupert Raj coined the term "voluntary gender worker" to describe the unofficial (and often unrecognized) labor that transgender activists (including himself) do.
"[17] Almost thirty years later, Raj announced that he had taken indefinite medical leave as a result of said burn-out,[16] and he officially retired from his job as a psychotherapist at Toronto's Sherbourne Health Centre .
In April 2006, he taught an accredited elective course for The Adler School of Professional Psychology (Ontario campus) in Toronto, employing his "TransPositive Therapeutic Model" (2002), supporting transsexual/transgender adults.
From 1982 to 1991, Rupert compiled/edited an international trans poetry anthology, Of Souls and Roles, Of Sex and Gender (likely the first of its kind[citation needed]), which he donated in manuscript form to The ArQuives: Canada's LGBTQ2+ Archives in 2006.
The volume includes nearly 400 poems penned by 169 trans people throughout Canada, the US, the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, and was donated to The Transgender Archives where it is currently available via PDF.
[24] Raj has received a number of awards, including a listing in the International Who’s Who In Sexology (First Edition, The Institute for Advanced Studies in Human Sexuality in San Francisco, 1986).
The THLG was co-founded by Rupert Raj, Susan Gapka, Michelle Hogan, Joanne Nevermann and Darla S.; subsequent early members included Shadmith Manzo, Martine Stonehouse and Davina Hader.
More recently, the Canadian Centre for Gender and Sexual Diversity has featured Rupert's work on their resources page for transgender, intersex, and Two Spirit people.