I recently came across the following article, from back in 2014:
- The Transgender Tipping Point by Katy Steinmetz, Time Magazine, May 29, 2014.
At that point the transgender movement had made some major steps forward over the previous decade, thanks largely to the Internet.
Also at that point, it had begun getting a lot more mass media exposure than it had ever gotten before -- thanks, in part, to Orange is the New Black, a popular Netflix drama starring Laverne Cox, an African-American transgender woman.
However, contrary to the impressions of some folks here on WP, the transgender community did NOT pop up out of nowhere at that point (or later). It had been around for many decades before.
As the Time article says:
Quote:
History is filled with people who did not fit society’s definition of gender, but modern America’s journey begins after World War II with a woman named Christine Jorgensen. (This article will use the names, nouns and pronouns preferred by individuals, in accordance with TIME’s style.) Ex-GI becomes blonde beauty: Operations transform bronx youth, trumpeted the New York Daily News headline on Dec. 1, 1952. Inside was the tale of a soldier born George, who sailed for Denmark after being honorably discharged, in search of a surgeon to physically transform him into her. “Nature made a mistake,” Jorgensen wrote in a letter that the paper printed, “which I have had corrected.”
The “blonde with a fair leg and a fetching smile,” as TIME described Jorgensen in 1953, became a national sensation and led some Americans to question ideas they had long taken for granted, like what makes a man a man and whether a man can, in fact, be a woman. At the time, the word transgender was not yet in use. Instead, America called Jorgensen a transvestite (trans meaning “across” and vest referring to vestments, or clothes); today, those who seek medical interventions are commonly known as transsexuals. Columnists wondered whether Jorgensen could be “cured” or “treated,” and in the decades that followed, many in the medical establishment viewed transsexuality–like homosexuality–as something to correct. In 1980, seven years after homosexuality was removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, a classification bible published by the American Psychiatric Association, transsexualism was added.
Eventually that entry was replaced by what psychiatrists called gender identity disorder, and in 2013 that diagnosis was superseded by gender dysphoria, a change applauded by many in the trans community. “‘Gender identity disorder’ [implied] that your identity is wrong, that you are wrong,” says Jamison Green, president of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. The change has helped remove the stigma of mental illness (though some worry that removing “disorder” may make it harder to access health care like hormone therapy).
The article also says:
Quote:
... the Internet has been a revolutionary tool for the trans community, providing answers to questions that previous generations had no one to ask, as well as robust communities of support. And the digital world offers a way to test the water before jumping in. As Widmer puts it, “You can be yourself on the Internet before you can be yourself in person.”
The Internet, indeed, helped a lot. But there was a transgender community (organized subculture) even before the Internet became popular.
In the 1970's, the trans community existed mostly as a small appendage to what was then called the gay community, or sometimes the "lesbian and gay" or "gay and lesbian" community, before the acronym "LGBT" (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender) was coined. As far back as the late 1970's, I recall a column by a trans woman in a local gay newspaper in Rochester, New York.
The acronym "LGBT" was coined at some point in the 1990's and became widely accepted, at least within the LGBT community, soon after the year 2000.
Below is the story of one part of the effort to get the term "LGBT" accepted within what was then most commonly called the "lesbian and gay" community. According to
A Brief Trip Thru Bisexual NYC's History on the website of the New York Area Bisexual Network:
Quote:
2000 - Bisexual and trans activists come together to form the Coalition for Unity and Inclusion.
The Coalition succeeds in drawing support from directors of LGBT Community organizations and politicians as well as grass-roots bi and transgender community participation in their letter writing campaign, petition drive and feedback campaign asking the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center to change its name to include Bisexual and Transgender people.
2001 - The Center was renamed and a new sign was unveiled on the front of the building on 12 July 2001 that reads: The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center.
2002 - Heritage of Pride renames their Lesbian and Gay Pride events which become the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride March, Rally, Festival and Dance in 2002.
(I personally was a friend of one of the people mentioned elsewhere on the above page, Brenda Howard.)
For more about the history of the transgender community, see:
- GLAAD's
Timeline: A Look Back at the History of Transgender Visibility (up through 2012)
- Wikipedia's
Timeline of transgender history
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21 Feb 2022, 4:45 pm
