(Note: I use the term "trans people" for trans people in general, though noteworthy to mention, this post mostly discussed trans women, and "transsexual" to describe specifically the group historically described as such, that pursued medical intervention of hormone therapy and surgeries in an attempt to fully transition to the other gender)
I found myself very much enjoying this short history. And also found, to my (it seems vain) surprise how little sophistication my previous knowledge about the history of trans people and LGBT people in general involved. I must note that this book perhaps should be better termed "American Transgender History" since it focuses on the United States almost exclusively (except a short section in the beginning about Magnus Hirschfeld and the Institut fuer Sexualwissenschaft, even this is later "revealed" to be included because of the impact it had on Harry Benjamin, an acquaintance of Hirschfeld's) - while it alludes to different developments in Europe (that seems to have been substantially more progressive than the USA, enabling HRT and SRS already at the 50s, while in the USA these only became truly available in the later 60s). But still - the USA has come to be supremely influential on queer cultures worldwide and therefore even this partial narrative is still very much valuable to me, although I am not an American myself.
The narrative focuses on trans people as a social phenomenon, and places the origin of both trans women and gay male communities (until the 1970s they were broadly seen as facets of a single community of Homosexuals/Effeminate Men) in the middle of the 19th Century with the process of urbanization. It allowed for people greater anonymity (which wasn't afforded in the traditional rural communities) and also greater contact with a more varied group of people, giving birth to early queer urban communities. These were further expanded by the advent of electric light that enabled a "nightlife" in addition to a "daylife".
As I mentioned prior (and also in my blog post about "Funeral Parade of Roses"), initially the categorization was more vague than it is nowadays, especially before the widespread use of HRT and gender-affirming surgeries, which made it initially more difficult to make distinctions between effeminate men and trans women. Also between "transvestites"/crossdressers and transsexuals. Some set up boundaries to protect their privileges from the beginning - noteworthily middle-class "respectable", white transvestites that usually met in secret and kept their male, heterosexual (that is, in this case, attracted to women) privileges that separated themselves from the transsexuals, which were seen as types of homosexuals instead, and were much more commonly poor, and lived primarily in multiracial groups and frequently, out of an inability to find other work, had to resort to sex work.
When Christine Jorgensen, perhaps the first truly famous transsexual, at least in the USA, entered the limelight, public attitude tended to be more about fascination with the wonders of science than later popular attitudes that became more characterized by hostility towards trans people than fascination.
In the USA, a major turning point was the publication of Harry Benjamin's "The Transsexual Phenomenon" that first advocated affirming the gender identity of transsexuals rather than try, in vain, to "fix them" which evidentially was impossible anyway. This resulted in increased access to healthcare and more attention from the medical establishment.
Around 1970 was the split between the gay and trans identities. As gay advocacy groups achieved victories, such as the depathologization of homosexuality and its removal from the DSM and focused on such efforts (as well as increasing cultural conformity to traditional masculine attire and behavior, compared with earlier years), they were contrasted with trans people's advocacy which involved access to hormone therapy and surgeries, and that therefore also enabled the medical establishment and psychiatry further influence in this regard and in fact, in contrast with homosexuals, increased the pathologization of trans people. This led to a clear and sharp distinction between these now separate groups of people.
As for trans men (I've discussed in this blog post trans women pretty much exclusively), the reason for less information about them is because they came to constitute their own communities only much later. That is because they tended to blend in, for example, as butches in the lesbian community or, when HRT became available, used to more easily blend even with cishet society. FTM specific groups however did eventually emerge, especially as second-wave radical feminism pushed against the rights of trans people, trans men that frequently found place in the lesbian community as masculine females were driven out and formed their own groups from just around that time, around the year 1970.
Anyway, in addition to this summary of a sort I just did I want to also express how reading about the history of this group I am a part of instilled pride within me, as well as, somehow, greater optimism in regards to my own transition. It's a short book yet hosts such wonderful narratives and I'd highly recommend this to anyone even remotely interested in the topic.
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