Transbigotry?

When I was about three or four years old – enough to be talking but not enough to be in kindergarten – my mother carried me through the lineup to the tellers at the bank. I had never seen a person of colour, and so I’d been awed to see a tall fellow with that “purple”-deep colour of skin. I turned to my mother and said, “oh, mom, I’d never let myself get that dirty.”

My embarassed mother kindly explained that some people are simply born with darker skin, and that ended my experience of personally-felt racial bigotry. A few years later, I learned from a close friend I’d made from Trinidad that skin colours sometimes come with cultural differences. It never occurred to me that any one skin colour or culture was any better than any other.

But I did also learn quickly that others didn’t necessarily share that same blissful innocence. As much as it clearly puzzled me when people expressed their contempt for my friend, it was certainly apparent to me that their contempt was very real. Even in Canada, where hatred was nowhere near as entrenched as it was further south, racism thrived.

I’ve also experienced it from the receiving side, twofold, one from the perspective of being Métis, in a culture where Natives are largely despised. In this situation, shame is taught implicitly, where it is intimated that a person should take refuge in their French last name, or resort to referring to their nationality as “mongrel” rather than identifying themselves as Métis. While I have since learned to be proud of my culture and now mourn not having been able to learn more of the traditions associated with it, it was still a painful experience hiding and pretending that nothing was amiss.

My other experience of bigotry came from being transgender. Even though it took me several decades to finally transition, the feelings were always there, and every crass joke that people made about men in dresses or every condemnation of “those perverts” served to drive me further into hiding, further into shame and further into the nightly suffocated struggle that almost culminated in suicide many times.

So if we learn so intimately how painful it is from the side of the victim, why is bigotry so easily foisted around in our own community?

Every so often, someone turns up the tune, “I’m Not a Fucking Drag Queen,” popularized by the movie, Better Than Chocolate. When I’d first heard it, the song was cute for about the first minute that it took before I started wondering exactly what was wrong about being a drag queen and why we should despise being associated with them. Certainly, there’s nothing wrong with defining oneself and pointing out when assumptions made about transsexuals based on the behaviours of others are fallacious, but I fail to see why it needs to be done at someone else’s expense. And yet, there is an enormous rift between many of the transgender communities where this self-defining takes on darker overtones: transsexuals trying to differentiate themselves from crossdressers and drag performers, crossdressers who feel that people who would undergo surgery to change their bodies are extremists and delusional, drag performers who embrace being gay and who feel that their compatriots should just wise up and do the same… there’s an ongoing factionalism that in many communities continues to drive wedges between us.

It does not stop there. At the grassroots level, our communities often ostracize people because they choose to be non-operative (because it isn’t consistent with the “one true way” medical model), or because they have spent some time in the sex trade, or because they play in the leather community (even when they display a healthy differentiation between fantasy and reality, and are clearly transgender in the latter). FTMs and MTFs sometimes feel that they have too many different needs to belong in the same support groups, and intersex people often balk at any association at all with anything transgender, some of whom have never experienced dysphoria and might have been lucky enough to be assigned the right gender at birth. It’s not unusual to see homophobia rear its ugly head when debates flare up between those who work with the local GLB folks (I mean the ones who seriously try to be supportive, not proven nemeses like the Human Rights Commission a.k.a. HRC) and those who call anyone who does so a “traitor.…” And then there’s the support meetings I’ve sat through where people complain about or tell unflattering jokes about “Pakis.” Or the “drunken Indians” comments said with no care that someone in the room is Métis.

If one had any doubts:

“… Susan has said all along that she’s not like other transgender people. She feels uncomfortable even looking at some, ‘like I’m seeing a bunch of men in dresses.’” – The St. Petersburg Times, about Susan
Stanton.

I’ll dispense with my take on Susan Stanton quickly. Although I object to her comments, I do see her as a creator of her own misery. Where she complains that “the transgender groups boo me,” and that her transition is a somewhat solitary one, this is a path that she carves for herself. When she had decided to become an activist, she failed to educate herself in the diversity of the community and the many needs it has, and in so doing she dropped the ball. By surrounding herself with people who are telling her that “Most Americans aren’t ready for us yet,” she’s succumbed to their rhetoric, rather than giving serious thought to the matter. A neophyte to transadvocacy, she has no idea how thoroughly and deeply the history of betrayal from her friends, the HRC, runs. But she will find out, when the next betrayal comes along and leaves her hanging in the wind. And when that happens, I see no need for hard feelings enduring from her novice mistakes, provided she becomes willing to see and admit where she was wrong. From my perspective, the personal maligning ends there.

As much as her comment angers me, though, I think it’s important that the subject has been brought up, because this is not just about Susan Stanton. This attitude persists far beyond this one incident.

“… like I’m seeing a bunch of men in dresses.”

This isn’t an altogether unusual complaint, in my experience. I’ve seen the aversion that people have to transwomen who’ve been harder-ravaged by testosterone, with heavy brows, deep voices, large statures, strong jawbones, recessive hairlines, wide shoulders…. “How can you be comfortable being seen in a store with her?” I’ve been asked. “I’d be terrified, and have to make myself as scarce as possible….”

Sorry folks, but not all of these things can be corrected with cosmetic surgery. And those things that can are often so costly that they become inaccessible to much of the community. We don’t all face the same challenges. For some of us, transition will be a lifelong process, and stealth is not a realistic objective. Should rights and protections then be only available to those who are “passable,” based on some unknown subjective scale? While conscientious and active advocates know better, I think our community would be surprised at some of the grassroots answers to that question. And this doesn’t even begin to touch on how often the “men in dresses” attitude is used as justification for shunning crossdressers, some of whom are transsexual at heart but held back by life circumstances (children, spouses, careers) and others of whom are dual-identified and need to alternately express both genders with the same intensity that we need to live one.

Please also understand that I don’t claim this bigotry to be endemic of the entire community, which can be an invaluable source of support and friendship. But it does exist in pockets, and where it does exist, it drives people away from the support they need, and likewise drives away those who would be happy (or at least willing) to provide it.

“’But I don’t blame the human rights groups from separating the transgender people from the protected groups. Most Americans aren’t ready for us yet,’ Susan says. Transgender people need to be able to prove they’re still viable workers — especially in the mainstream.”

Until there is protection in place to occasionally discourage employers from firing workers just for being trans, it will continue to be a complicated and sometimes monumental task to carve a successful career, and will continue to happen only so long as a person can remain “passably” stealth and not draw attention… or cause the right-wing fearmongers out there to panic and pick up their torches. And as long as successful transgender people are not free to draw attention, no one will take notice of their accomplishments and associate them with transgender individuals, and this “proving” that is being touted will never take place. Is the world ready for a transgender city manager? In the rest of society, the answer to that would depend solely on personal job qualifications – apparently, we’re to be patronized into believing that we’re not ready for that, yet. And the wonderful thing about the Barney Frank trumpet-that-there-isn’t-enough-support-of-transgender-rights approach is that the louder and more frequent they get on the subject, the more they will convince the legislators who might have once voted for transgender rights.

There is a reason that society associates transgender people with “shemale” porn, bank robberies, unemployment and marginal lifestyles. If you’re not lucky enough to be deemed suitably “passable,” it can be difficult to secure the lowest of jobs – whatever the qualifications. With the difficulties sometimes just in landing a minimum wage job at McDonald’s, coupled with the costs of hormones and surgeries needed just to arrive at a point of peace with oneself, frankly, the sex trade is unfortunately one of the most viable solutions. This will not change until a signal – one with some legal clout – is sent out into the professional world that it is no longer acceptable to exclude transgender people from more viable career paths.

And the transgender community will not be helping itself in pushing forward for these kinds of needs as long as it is still wrapped up in exclusion, distaste and division, and creating environments in which advocacy continues to eat its own. Often, I’ve heard people trumpet that Sylvia Rivera, Marsha P. Johnson and others who threw the first stones that touched off the Stonewall Riots and the gay liberation movement were transgender, in protest of the gay community’s past history of excluding us from the bargaining table. And far too often, I’ve heard (sometimes in the same breath!) derision of drag artists, sex trade workers and anyone else deemed to create a “negative impression” of the transgender community. But at the time of Stonewall, Sylvia Rivera, Marsha P. Johnson et al were drag queens and prostitutes. Sometimes, I think that the only thing that has changed since Stonewall is that gradually some of our community have managed to escape the ranks of the disenfranchised, and are trying to distance themselves from them. Once again, there is a repeat of the cycle of jettisoning the less fortunate – financially, physically or both – and some of us seem to have no qualms about doing to them what was done previously to us (and for exactly the same reasoning).

From time to time, it’s good to remember what inclusion really means, and embrace the consequences. As far as the move toward exclusion, I’ll have no part of it. I’d never let myself get that dirty.

A Transgender Art Gallery

And there you have it, the piece of artwork that I alluded to in my first blog entry, which led to a near-beating and ironically spurred my decision to transition from male to female.

For those who didn't read the story and want the Coles Notes version, "Bodybag" first appeared in a number of online galleries in early 2005. Even though I was still not out to anyone else, I realized that I was transgendered, and described the piece (which is about as subtle as a jackhammer, in my opinion) as the experience of being transgendered. I had also had to state an artist location, and unwisely stated "Edmonton." This apparently inspired someone who was also located nearby to set out to track me down (I've since figured out how it was done and taken steps to avoid that in the future).

I'm filling in some of the blanks, because the three college-age men who were waiting for me when I arrived home from work were never caught. I can't get all the details. All I know was that when they were delivering an art critique to me in the form of a golf club and two fence boards, among the words "fag" and "pervert," someone said something about my gallery and a snide comment about bodybags.

I was lucky in that a neighbor was coming out into the alley and intervened before I could experience much more than a few bruises and a pain in my lower ribs that stayed with me for a few months. But the feral rage that I'd unexpectedly confronted really took its toll. I deleted nearly all of my online artwork, destroyed all the paper copies and original illustrations and retired the nickname under which I did graphic art. I restricted my travel to home, then work, then home again. I learned to look under the car as I approached it, to check in the back seat as I unlocked it, to never park where there were people nearby, to never stop anywhere but work and home. The cupboards were growing bare, because I had difficulty getting enough nerve to go shop for groceries. The gas tank would nearly be empty before I would finally give in and stop for gas. I went so far into the closet that I'm sure I must have been hidden under the carpet. What most stunned me is that I was attacked without even being otherwise visible as bisexual and transgendered. The solution, at first, was to try to become so hidden that I ultimately suffocated.

And that's when my reality hit the wall in a head-on collision. I realized that I couldn't live like that. I could either commit suicide, or finally come out with everything, and face whatever came at me. I arrived at the realization that I would rather live a year as a woman, rather than two or three more decades as a man. Actually, that's probably oversimplifying how dark those days became. But the title "Bodybag" could not have been more appropriate.

"Cybele" has been traditionally my most popular piece, and it wasn't until years after I'd done it that I really realized what I was trying to say with it.

A friend of mine once distinguished between the 9-to-5, paying the bills existence and her extracurricular romantic activities as a difference between "consciousness and life." The phrase stayed with me.

At the time of producing this piece, I was strongly questioning reality in my work, and pictured my employment activity (and just about everything that the man I was had to be involved in) as a kind of robotic function. I often joked that I didn't actually work, it was just the automaton that I'd sent there in my place. I'd written a free-verse poem that read:

"I

Am not me;

What you see

Is a figment

Of my imagination..."

I'd tried to find out how to go about transitioning when I was about 20 years old, but then eventually felt I had to give up. So I always knew in the back of my mind that I was transgendered, but even so, didn't realize until much later that the reason I personified myself in this piece as female was because it was when I could express myself as female that I truly felt alive.

A commission that was never paid for, "Creature" sort of married latex fetish with Gigerist angularity and (by implication) deformity.

Although not a common theme for me, this became a cult favorite of others, for a time.

Loosely inspired by conversations with a correspendent who expressed some transgender sense of self, as well as being involved in the leather (BDSM) community. The conversations were about a craft project that was in development, and I completed the image long before seeing any of the final result (consequently, it is very different).

Another expression of the self as female. In this case, expressing fragility.

Being transgendered was an isolating experience before the Internet. There were few, if any, that one could trust enough to talk to. There was a lot of confusion, pieces not fitting, no easy way to sort things out or find self-acceptance. I didn't hear the word "transvestite" in a context where I could figure out what it meant, until I was about 12 or so -- and even though I know now that it doesn't accurately describe me, it was still enough connection that I slunk off to my room and privately cried all night. I realized that if there was actually a word for it in the English language, then I wasn't the only one.

Even so, there was still always this feeling that what I was experiencing was a character defect, some personal flaw that I'd brought on myself... that there were still pieces missing.
After putting it all together, I was still so used to that fragile confusion that I always feared that "A Single Gust of Wind" could whip up and blow me all apart again.

I was close to coming out for the second time, at age 37, when I did "Cascade."

The idea of the woman's hair emerging from the portrait and becoming a reality was a kind of wishful thinking. The hiding of half her face reflected the kind of masked existence I still felt from trying to "pass" as a man in the everyday world.

And there was definitely an intentional use of color, this warm woman trapped in a cold world, but yearning to flow outward into something richer and more welcoming.

Another one that makes no effort to hide its message.

This is one of my earliest pieces, and I'm very unhappy with it. However, it still seems to be one of my most popular. I may have to revisit it one day.

One thing I am pleased with is the griminess of the gears, and the dankness of the colours.

The title, "My Own Pretty Hate Machine" comes from a line by Tori Amos in "Caught A Light Sneeze."

There are two versions of this image, one without text. The other image clearly shows a pre-operative transsexual woman, and also sold far more copies when available as a print.

The transgender community sometimes decries expressions of "drag" or "shemale" motifs as creating negative stereotypes about the community. I believe that there is a serious danger in doing so. It has to be remembered that people who expressed themselves in this way were among the first to be bold and visible, as well as remaining after many other transwomen transitioned and moved on to become stealth, in order to teach the new generations of girls how to tuck, apply makeup and "pass." Excluding them now would be very much like the injustice done to "butch/femme" lesbians who in the politically-correct '80s were ejected from the movement that they founded and gave strength to -- or like the injustice done to the transgender community when we participated in (and arguably even started) the Stonewall riots that touched off the Gay Pride movement, only to be excluded from it, left off legislation and treated like an embarassment and political liability, afterward.

In the 17 years between my first and second decisions to transition, I struggled with the belief that I would never be able to have GRS surgery. "Rockette" and other works that I did in an erotica environment were expressions of a period that I had to pass through, in which I had to examine partial transition and decide if I could live with that and/or feel that I could still be beautiful. I believe that "drag" and the "shemale" motif are very much a case of others similarily defining themselves, regardless of whether there is any pandering taking place.

The character's ram horns were a nod to my earliest "Freak" pieces (see below).

"Scarlet" happened at about the moment of my decision at 37 to transition.

It was a rare post-assault piece, and possibly happened because the render had already been done previously -- all I had to do was finally compose it.

She was my way of saying, "Here I am. Deal with it." Notice that the face is far less hidden than in "Cascade."

I do not have blue eyes, but brown does not look so good in spot-colour.

"Night Out" was originally done as an advertisement commissioned by a nightclub. I went for a composition effect, and it later won an online award for it.

The text is not necessary to read for the enjoyment of the piece, but the script about feeling sexy and that "it's moments like these that one feels wanted, intimate, alive...." (another reference to what was later expressed in "Cybele") betrays a little about what my subconscious was trying to tell me at the time.

"Alive" is scripted backwards, because life itself seemed to me to be that way.

This was the start of my "unreality" phase, if I recall correctly.

"Freak V" is one of my earliest pieces, and the only surviving one out of about 12 entitled "Freak."

Many of the images at this time showed a struggle with being different, sometimes showing shame and self-loathing; other times (as here) depicting the hate as coming from external sources.

The central figures in the "Freak" images were sometimes monstrous hybrids, although that is not visible in this one. The common character sported ram horns, bat wings, horse hooves and a forked tail, a vilification that I think was seen more from external sources than internal. In most of the images, the woman displayed an ironic kind of pride despite deformity.

Much of the artwork at this time was amateurish and lacking skill, which is ultimately why I purged them. I liked this one enough to keep, but it has had a tendency to be banned everywhere due to the crucifixion motif.

This is one of two images entitled "The Unknown Universe."

For many, it's the idea of a man trying to understand women.

For me, it was a yearning for the experience of growing up and living life as one.

In both interpretations, there is the sense that she is unattainable.

Everyone speculates about "Past Lives" at one time or another, even if they don't believe in them.

Here, all the lives -- displayed on a flowing swirl of cards or windows -- all express the protagonist being alternately male or female, as if the body is immaterial but the soul doesn't change.

It was perhaps a kind of "coping" with living a male life, maybe telling myself that this was just what I had to do, in order to pass on to the next (hopefully female) existence. Even so, the Priestess that the lives flow from is not Gaia, as many have speculated to me, but my own soul, so there was still a clear defining of self.

There is a touching moment in the foreign film, "Beautiful Boxer" in which the young Nong Toom asks the monk he is given to follow if it is possible that if he is good, kind and selfless in this life that he might receive his greatest wish (which we know is to be a girl) in the next life. The monk answers, if you are good and sincere enough, then "perhaps you will even achieve it in this one."

"The Undersea World of Jacqueline Rousseau" occurred at a time in which everything I was doing reflected a certain disillusion with reality, and played with gross distortions of it. "Night Out" initiated the phase, and "Cybele" was the pinnacle of it, although there were much stranger pieces at this time ("The Inane Asylum," "Arcana," "Paradigms Lost," not shown here).

Perhaps strangest of all was this one, commissioned by a woman in Texas, with only a small few requests about the composition. What resulted was a kind of fanciful "Adventures of Baron Munschausen" -style ridiculously tall-tale take on the work of Jacques Cousteau, which I considered turning into a series.

The rider and the seahorse were meant as a kind of dominance and submission theme -- partly due to the commissioner's request, and partly to create a binary framework. Even through the characters look very different, they are meant to represent the same person, and a kind of inner diversity. The subterranean environment was my way of expressing a look deep within. But despite the binary conception, making either character male just did not seem appropriate, both to the one who commissioned the piece and to myself.

Some of what I was saying in this piece is still a mystery to me. The horse symbolization, for example (the characters in the "Freak" series often sported horses' hooves as well -- I'm not clear about the significance).

I have deleted, destroyed and lost a number of my graphic files and works, including the high resolution version of this one. Strangely, this is the one I miss most.

The line, "Every Day Its Halloween," goes back to the best way that I could find to describe what it is like to be female, living in a male body.

"People think of transsexuals as dressing up and having surgery to become someone else, a kind of Halloween outing taken to the extreme," I once wrote in my weblog. "But it is every other day that is Halloween. It's about becoming tired of trying to pass as something you've been forced to be, by virtue of a body that doesn't feel like it belongs to you."

This will probably seem a strange one. It is also very dark, and depending on the brightness of your monitor, you might have difficulty viewing it.

During the 17 years between first and second attempts to transition (again, with the belief that I would never be able to have GRS surgery), one curious expression of coping with living somewhere between genders emerged. "Sweet Chastity" was an answer to that, in a motif which popped up in several pieces at that time.

For many transsexuals, myself included, we can be very uncomfortable with our bodies. For me, the pre-operative genitalia were (are) a "no fly zone," as it were. I became more and more uncomfortable with any kind of contact there, aside from whatever was necessary during the morning shower. It's indescribable -- an overwhelming feeling that something just isn't "right," there. Contact becomes an automatic mood-wrecker. So the idea of something preventing contact and use was surprisingly welcome, even if not understood, in the beginning.

The steel belt in this image is a 3D object modeled after the design of a real belt manufacturer. So yes, belts like this really do exist, from a number of manufacturers, both for male and female anatomy. This Neosteel belt design was selected because it specifically contains male anatomy but is designed to look as though it contains female anatomy.

As a kind of coping mechanism regarding the possibility of partial transition at this time, this symbolized a way to both hide the male anatomy and to restrict experiences of love and eroticism to female expressions, rather than male ones.

Metaphors of the mind work in mysterious ways.

I passed off "Back to Doing Things the Old Way" as a humourous jab at computer failure and other frustrating throwback experiences.

But the wringer was definitely life, and the figure passing through it was definitely the woman I was, trying to cope with it.

Of the remaining images that follow:

The hourglass figure in "ErotiKaleidoScope" is a complete optical illusion. The entire piece is composed from four reflections of a 3D render of a single booted leg, and then layered.

And "Edges of Twilight" is an emotive piece, of the passage of time and being lost in introspection.

This one was for all the sleepless nights and crying, wondering what was wrong with me or attempting to somehow bargain with a higher power to be able to become female -- or at least to make my brain and body match, whichever way I had to go.

A Transgender History

A Transgender History

Initially started for the local website I operate at AlbertaTrans.org, I thought this might be an interesting resource here as well.

1777 -- French spy and diplomat Charles-Geneviève-Louis-Auguste-André-Timothée Éon de Beaumont (October 5, 1728 - May 21, 1810), usually known as the Chevalier d'Eon is allowed to return to France on the condition that she live and dress as a woman. Earlier in 1756, the Chevalier had posed as a woman for several years to gain the friendship of Empress Elizabeth of Russia. Throughout her life, there would be ongoing speculation as to the Chevalier's physical gender, which would be determined as male after her death (the predominant opinion had previously been that she was female).

1860 -- Herculine Barbin is studied by her doctor, who discovers that the intersexed woman has a small penis, with testicles inside her body. Barbin is declared legally male against her wishes, becomes the subject of much scandal for having previously taught in a girl's school, moves to Paris but continues to live in poverty, and ultimately commits suicide in 1868.

1865 -- Dr. James Barry dies, and is discovered to have female sexual characteristics. He had been a surgeon with the British Army, and had been passing as male since at least 1809.

1872 -- Eugene Schuyler visits Turkestan and observes that, "here boys and youths specially trained take the place of the dancing-girls of other countries." The Bacchá are androgynous or cross-dressing Turkish underclass boys, trained in erotic dance, but also available as prostitutes. This tradition continues until around or shortly after WWI.

1907 -- Harry Benjamin (January 12, 1885 – August 24, 1986) meets Magnus Hirschfeld (May 14, 1868 - May 14, 1935) for the first time. Although it would be some time before Benjamin would actively research transsexuality, the two men would become the field's pioneers.

1910 -- Magnus Hirschfeld coins the term "transvestite."

1919 -- Magnus Hirschfeld founds the Institute for Sexology in Berlin, Germany. This would be the first clinic to serve transgendered people regularily and develop their study.

1920 -- Jonathan Gilbert publishes Homosexuality and Its Treatment, which includes the story of "H," later revealed to be a Portland physician. Dr. Alan Hart "transitioned" by having a hysterectomy and proceeding to live as male, in 1917. The lesbian community would later proclaim Hart to be a pioneer and classify his decision to live as a man as being an accomodation to social prejudice and coercion by a heterosexual doctor, rather than accepting any explaination of transsexuality. However, an examination of the central characters in Hart's novels reveals many of the common themes and feelings that transsexuals experience.

Although a few surgeons had already carried out some incomplete sex reassignment surgeries previously (primarily removing the existing sex organs, not creating new ones), 1920 also saw the first complete surgeries for MTF transsexuals. These took place at Magnus Hirschfeld's Institute for Sexology by Drs. Ludwig Levy-Lenz and Felix Abraham.

1923 -- Recognizing some of the differences from transvestites, Magnus Hirschfeld introduces the term "transsexual."

1920s and 1930s -- Carl Jung proposes the idea of Animus and Anima, that every male has some of the feminine in his unconscious (Anima), and every female has some of the masculine (Animus).

1928 -- Virginia Woolf's novel Orlando: A Biography is published, chronicling the story of a man who decides not to grow old. He doesn't, but he awakes one day in the body of a young woman, and lives out a lifetime as her before waking as a man. The remaining centuries up to the time the book was written are seen through a woman's eyes.

1930 -- Marlene Dietrich (Marie Magdalene Dietrich von Losch; December 27, 1901 – May 6, 1992) moves from German Cabaret to American film with her debut in Morocco. As the '30s progress, she becomes infamous for dressing in male attire, and gradually brings this penchant to fashion and film -- ultimately making it acceptable for women to wear pants and other masculine forms of clothing. Reportedly, she was quite persistent on changing into male attire offstage, and rumors circulated of lesbian relationships -- although she has never been fully established as identifying as male.

1930 also saw the transition of Lili Elbe, formerly Einar Wegener, a Danish painter and the first publically-known recipient of an SRS surgery. This became a major public scandal in Germany and Denmark, and the King of Denmark invalidated her marriage that October. She was fully intent on being someday able to conceive a child, and this drove her surgeons to try far-reaching techniques -- she actually endured five surgeries in this process (the first was to remove the male genitals, the second to transplant ovaries -- although she did have underdeveloped ones of her own -- the third was unspecified, the fourth to remove the ovaries due to serious complications and the fifth being a "vaginaplasty"). She died in 1931, probably from complications from her final surgery, although rumors persisted that she had faked her death in order to live in peace.

1931 -- Dr. Felix Abraham publishes Genital Reassignment of Two Male Transvestites, detailing those first MTF SRS surgeries in 1923.

1932 -- Harry Benjamin arranges a speaking tour for Magnus Hirschfeld in the United States.

1933 -- A few months after Hitler assumed power in Germany, the Institute for Sexual Science is vandalized and looted by a mob of Nazi "students." On May 6th, its archives of books, photographs, research documents and more are burned publically in Opera Square. The physicians and researchers involved with the clinic flee Germany, or in some cases commit suicide, unable to otherwise escape. Magnus Hirschfeld had moved to Paris by this time, and dies in exile in Nice, of a heart attack on his 67th birthday.

1938 -- Di-Ethyl Stilbestrol (DES) is introduced into chicken feed as a means of increasing meat production. Later, it is marketed to pregnant women as a "vitamin" to help prevent miscarriages (an unsubstantiated claim). Prescriptions for this purpose ceased in 1973, because by the 1970s, this drug became linked to endometriosis, uterine cancer, ovarian cancer and infertility in female children, and more recently to intersex conditions and transsexuality.

1941 -- Premarin® (conjugated estrogens from pregnant mares) is first marketed in Canada (the U.S. follows in two years).

The phrase "drag queen" first appears in print, although it had been used as theater and gay culture slang as early as the 1870s. It is thought to be a shortening of "dressed as girl," versus the alternately used "drab," from "dressed as boy."

1942 -- Dr. Harry Klinefelter first diagnoses Klinefelter's Syndrome, a condition caused by a chromosome nondisjunction in males; affected individuals have a pair of X sex chromosomes instead of just one, and are associated with additional risk for some medical conditions. Patients with Klinefelter's Syndrome can be (but are not always) characterized by effeminate appearance, sterility, some gynecomastia and occasional transgenderism.

1946 -- The Garden of Allah opens in the basement of the Arlington Hotel, in Seattle's Pioneer Square. It is not the first gay cabaret club, but becomes fairly well-known and is chronicled in the book, An Evening at the Garden of Allah: A Gay Cabaret in Seattle.

1948 -- Harry Benjamin is introduced by Alfred Kinsey to a boy who wants to become a girl, and whose mother seeks a treatment to assist, rather than thwart the child. The following year, he begins treating transsexuals in San Francisco and New York with hormones. The Institute for Sexual Science had not previously done this; the treatment was entirely new.

1952 -- Christine Jorgensen (May 30, 1926 – May 3, 1989) is "outed" to the American press, and becomes the subject of great controversy. Her surgery had been performed two years earlier by Dr. Christian Hamburger in Copenhagen, Denmark. She hadn't wanted to become a public spectacle, but spent her remaining years educating people about transsexuals.

1953 -- Ed Wood Jr.'s film Glen or Glenda appears, providing a surprisingly sincere attempt to understand transgenderism, despite its bizarre and schlocky B-movie trappings. Purportedly inspired by Christine Jorgensen. Wood would later become rather famous in Hollywood circles as being a transvestite.

1955 -- Dr. John Money, a psychologist, writes the first of many papers in the Bulletin of the Johns Hopkins Hospital which will establish for him a reputation as a pioneer in the field of sexual development, and a proposes the theory that gender identity develops primarily as a result of social learning from early childhood.

Dame Edna Everidge (alternate link) first appears in a Melbourne comedy revue in 1955. At this time she is known as "Mrs Norm Everage". She goes on to become an Australian figure of note in the 1990s.

1958 -- The first Phalloplasty for gender reassignment purposes is performed by Dr. Judy T. Wu in Bratsk, Russia. Previously, the procedure had only been devised for men who had experienced amputations, particularily during WWI. Phalloplasty would not become very refined until the 1970s, when additional aspects such as a pump for creating erections would be devised for injured Vietnam veterans.

1960 -- Virginia (Charles) Prince begins publishing Transvestia Magazine. She also founds Los Angeles' Hose and Heels Club and another organization that develops into Tri-Ess ("The Society for the Second Self"). These organizations are thought to be the first modern transgender support groups, and the magazine is the first publication for and by transgender people. She proceeds with a strong belief, however, in "heterosexual crossdressing" (i.e. crossdressers who are only attracted to women) and excludes "gay" or "bisexual" crossdressers from her groups, as well as transitioning transsexuals. Prince eventually goes on to live full-time as female, but Tri-Ess still does not allow full membership for gay men or MTF transsexuals to this day.

1965 -- David Reimer is born (named Bruce, by his parents). The following year, his penis is burned up to the base during a circumcision accident. He was taken to the Johns Hopkins Medical Center in Baltimore to see John Money. Money recommended that Reimer be raised as a girl. An orchidectomy was performed, and Reimer was raised with the name "Brenda."

1966 -- Harry Benjamin publishes The Transsexual Phenomenon. Although he hadn't coined the word "transsexual," it became the term of choice following this publication.

Johns Hopkins Medical Center opens the first Gender Clinic, under John Money's guidance. Although Money's beliefs and writings cause severe damage with regards to intersex children and gender reassignment at birth, he also champions gender reassignment surgery (SRS) in adults, and the clinic becomes the mecca for gender transition. Much of the surgical work from this time would pioneer SRS techniques. Money's legacy would be a mixed blessing / curse to the transgender cause.

One hot August night in San Francisco, the management at Gene Compton's Cafeteria call police to deal with an unruly table of transpeople, hustlers, and down-and-outers (a typical segment of their clientele). When they attempt to arrest one of the drag queens, she throws coffee in his face, and a riot ensues, spilling out into the street. Although transgender (and gay pride) activism wouldn't be galvanized until the Stonewall riot of 1969, the Compton's riot would help set the stage for the gay pride movement, as well as be a spark to draw the San Francisco GLBT communities together earlier than elsewhere, making the city a cultural mecca for alternate sexualities. The story of Comton's Cafeteria is not well known, but told in the documentary Screaming Queens (alternate link). After the riot, (now-Sgt.) Elliot Blackstone, who had been appointed the first liaison to the GLBT community in 1962, educates many on the Police force, helping the city to become one of the most trans-friendly environments in the world. He also helps to organize San Francisco's first transgender support group.

Mid 1960s through the '70s -- Reed Erickson (1917 – 1992) founds the Erickson Educational Foundation, which supports many research projects that don’t fit into the usual catagories of grants... parapsychology, dolphin / human communication, human potential movement, and transsexuality. Erickson's financial support makes much of the work of Harry Benjamin, John Money's Gender Clinic at Johns Hopkins Medical Center possible.

1968 -- The International Olympic Committee (IOC) begins chromosome testing of female athletes, effectively banning transsexuals and some intersexed individuals (some of whom were fertile as female, with children) from competition, until 2002.
Universities also begin opening clinics for treating transsexuals; the first surgeries are performed on non-intersexed transsexuals.

Stonewall

1969 -- Sylvia Rivera (2 July 1951–19 February 2002) throws a bottle at New York City cops harrassing patrons at Stonewall Inn on June 28, 1969; friend Marsha P. Johnson (1945 - July 6, 1992 -- Johnson is one of the many we remember during the Transgender Day of Remembrance) and several others join in, and the Stonewall Riots touch off the Gay and Lesbian Liberation movements (in other retellings, Johnson throws the first projectile). A founding member of both the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Activists Alliance, by 1974, those organizations would abandon her, seeing transgendered people as being an embarassment and a political liability to the gay rights cause. By the 1990s, political gay and lesbian groups would denounce Rivera's contribution, even denying that she was present during the Stonewall Riots. Rivera gradually fell into alcoholism, and it wouldn't be until the turn of the millennium that she would reemerge as a public figure.

1970 -- Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson form STAR, the first transgender activist organization, which later (at times) included a safe-house.

Virginia Prince, of Tri-Ess, coins the word "transgender," albeit with a limited definition to describe her transvestitism.

April Corbett's (neé Ashley; alternate link) marriage is annulled and she is declared to be legally still a man, in spite of a legal sex reassignment, leaving United Kingdom post-operative transsexuals in legal limbo, unable to marry as either sex, until 2004.

Andy Warhol protege Holly Woodlawn debuts in the movie Trash, for which the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences would be petitioned to nominate her for an Oscar (they wouldn't). Woodlawn would appear in a few more films and then disappear from sight, but not before being immortalized in the Lou Reed song, "Walk on the Wild Side."

After initial rejection by founder Betty Friedan (who referred to lesbians as "the lavender menace"), the National Organization for Women (NOW) expands policy to include lesbian rights. Embrace of transgender issues does not come until circa 2003, and remains a marginal part of their policy. As NOW represents much of the core of the feminist movement, feminism as a whole is still very resistant to accepting transwomen as "women," even after surgery is performed.

1970s (specific year unknown) -- Metoidioplasty is developed for female-to-male transsexuals. Phalloplasty had existed previously, but Metoidioplasty was seen as a more affordable option, with better results in sensation.

1972 -- John Money (with Anke Ehrhardt) publishes Man & Woman, Boy & Girl: Gender Identity from Conception to Maturity. He would go on to publish several books asserting that gender is learned, and not genetically predetermined. This theory is seized upon by the feminist movement as evidence that women are socialized to be passive against their true natures, and this later becomes a wedge between lesbian feminists and transsexual women.

In many of his writings of this time, Money cites his famous "John/Joan case", which he touts as being a socialization of a boy whose penis had been lost in a circumcision accident, to be raised successfully as a girl. "John/Joan," however, is David Reimer, who is not settling into his reassigned gender as "Brenda" as well as Money believes.

As a consequence of many of Money's writings, paediatricians mistakenly take up the practice of gender assignment at birth. This is most often determined by the length of the penile / clitoral tissue: if it is smaller than a certain length, the child's tissue is trimmed and they are assigned to be raised as a girl. This policy continued up to the turn of the millennium, and is a major factor in the origins of many intersexed children.

1973 -- Folk singer and accomplished activist Beth Elliott, aka "Mustang Sally," becomes vice-president of the Daughters of Bilitis. Soon afterward, she is "outed" as a transsexual, and hounded out of the organization by transphobic lesbian seperatists. At the West Coast Lesbian Conference held in Los Angeles later that year, the controversy would continue as lesbians protest the fact that Elliott is scheduled to perform at the meeting. She would mostly abandon activism until 1983.

This division continues, as Sylvia Rivera is followed at a Gay Pride Rally by Jean O'Leary, who denounces transwomen as female impersonators profiting from the derision and oppression of women.

Homosexuality is delisted from the medical community's standard DSM, declaring that it is no longer a mental disorder (and never was). Transgenderism, however, remains listed as a mental disability, termed "gender dysphoria," to this day.

The stage musical, The Rocky Horror Show debuts in London. Jim Sharman and Richard O'Brien would later translate it to film as The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which would become a true cult phenomenon. The theme, "don't dream it, be it" becomes a rallying cry for many transsexuals as well as many libertarians of all stripes.

1974 -- Jan Morris publishes Conundrum, the story of her quest for personal identity, and one of the earliest autobiographies to shed light on the transsexual dilemma.

1976 -- Reneé Richards (August 19, 1934 - present) is "outed" and barred from competition when she attempts to enter a womens' tennis tournament (the U.S. Open). Her subsequent legal battle establishes that transsexuals are fully, legally recognized in their new identity after SRS, in the United States. Her story would be told in the book and movie, Second Serve, but Richards would later decide that she regretted her transition and the resulting public harassment.
Jonathan Ned Katz publishes Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. and the connection between Jonathan Gilbert's "H" and Dr. Alan Hart, but asserts Hart as a lesbian, effectively stealing transgender history.

1977 -- Sandy Stone is "outed" while working for Olivia Records, the first womens' music record label, as a recording engineer. Lesbian activists threaten a boycott of Olivia products and concerts, forcing the company to ask for Stone's resignation. Angela Douglas writes a satirical letter to Sister as a protest of the transphobia in the lesbian community in general, and the attacks on Sandy Stone in particular.

1979 -- Janice Raymond publishes The Transsexual Empire, a semi-scholarly transphobic attack. In the book, she cites Douglas' letter out of context as an example of transsexual mysogyny, and casts Sandy Stone's involvement in Olivia Records as "divisive" and "patriarchal." (Stone would reply to these accusations in her book, The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto.) She championed the idea that gender is purely a matter of "sex role socialization" (an opinion that coincided very much with John Money's, despite her open attacks on him), writing "... All transsexuals rape women's bodies by reducing the real female form to an artifact, appropriating this body for themselves. However, the transsexually constructed lesbian feminnist violates women's sexuality and spirit as well.... Transsexuals merely cut off the most obvious means of invading women, so that they seem non-invasive."

Johns Hopkins Medical Center closes its Gender Clinic, under the recommendation of new curator, Paul McHugh, John Money's successor and an opponent to both Money's idea of gender as being learned, and Money's support of transsexuals' need to transition. Over the next two decades, many of the other Gender Clinics across North America would follow suit. The closure was justified by pointing to a 1979 report ("Sex Reassignment: Follow-up," published in Archives of General Psychiatry 36, no. 9) by Jon Meyer and Donna Reter that claimed to show "no objective improvement" following male-to-female GRS surgery. This report was later widely questioned and eventually found to be contrived and possibly fraudulent, but the damage had been done.

Musician and synthesized music pioneer Wendy Carlos transitions and goes public.

Gays, lesbians and transsexuals, who were previously condemned to death in Iran, are given a new fate under law: they are forced to undergo SRS surgery to "correct" the inclination. Transsexuals are still held with a great deal of derision in Iran, and are encouraged to keep silent about their past.

1980 -- David Reimer (as "Brenda") learns at the age of 15 from his parents that he had been born a boy, and decides to re-establish a male identity. This process would take until 1997, and involve testosterone injections, a double-mastectomy and two phalloplasty surgeries.

Joanna Clark, aka Sister Mary Elizabeth, an Episcopal Nun, organizes the ACLU Transsexual Rights Committee.

Paul Walker organizes the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association to promote standards of care for transsexual and transgendered clients. He also founds the Janus Information Facility, continuing the work of Erickson Educational Foundation. Later, he would fall ill, and Joanna Clark and Jude Patton would co-found J2CP Information Services to continue this legacy.

1981 -- Model, actress and Bond Girl Caroline Cossey ("Tula") is "outed" by the British press. She would later become the first post-operative transsexual to pose for Playboy. By 1988, she would be struggling with the European Court of Human Rights to recognize her as a female -- she would win in June 1989, but the court would overturn their decision a year later. Recognition would not come until The Gender Recognition Act 2004.

1982 -- Boy George (George Alan O'Dowd) and Culture Club emerge on the pop charts with the song, "Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?" His crossdressing image is not totally new (androgyny had been played with by the likes of David Bowie, Steve Tyler and Aerosmith, Hall and Oates, Elton John...), but had certainly never been taken to the same extreme. By 1986, however, the disintegration of his relationship with drummer Jon Moss and drug problems would hamstring him and Culture Club would be disbanded. Despite some resurgences (he had a hit with the Roy Orbison song for the movie The Crying Game, for example)

1984 -- The International Foundation for Gender Education (IFGE) is founded, becoming the first major transgender organization to welcome both transsexual and crossdressing members, along with dual inclusion in its magazine, Tapestry (later, Transgender Tapestry Journal).
Heavy Metal band Twisted Sister brings gender-bending to the fore in a different music genre, although glam rock had been somewhat previously popularized by Aerosmith and KISS in the 1970s. Censorship contributes to the failure of their follow-up album, and front man Dee Snider spends two years heavily occupied with the music industry fight against the PMRC music labelling movement.

1987 -- Albertan k.d. lang makes her musical debut. lang, whose image is very much a gender-challenging form of androgyny, exemplifies the dichotomy within the lesbian community regarding female-to-male transsexuals: so long as one does not step beyond the "butch" limit to actually transition to male, they are accepted and even applauded, but those who transition are deemed "traitors." lang herself is out as a lesbian, but does not identify as being transgendered.

1989 -- Billy Tipton, a well-respected jazz musician, dies and is discovered to be female, after presenting as a man since 1933.

Ray Blanchard proposes the theory of autogynephilia, which he defined as "a man's paraphilic tendency to be sexually aroused by the thought or image of himself as a woman." This theory catches on with some writers of the time, even transgender advocate Dr. Anne Lawrence, but is never quite accepted by the medical community as a whole, as it has many gaps in study (and logic), and widely conflicts with the accepted model of gender identity disorder. By the turn of the millennium, it would be dropped in favor of more biological studies of transgenderism.

RuPaul first appears in the Talking Heads video "Love Shack," and goes on to become a drag queen of worldwide notoriety.

1990 -- The term "two-spirit" originates in Winnipeg, Canada, during the third annual intertribal Native American/First Nations gay and lesbian conference. It comes from the Ojibwa words niizh manidoowag (two-spirits). It is chosen as a means to distance Native/First Nations people from non-Natives, as well as from the words "berdache" and "gay" -- previously, there were a myriad of words used, different depending on tribe. The phrase "two-spirit" is used to denote all third-gendered peoples, whether gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered -- but the intersexed are held in particularily high regard, and thought to be beings of potentially great power and blessing. The older term of "berdache" had been French in origin, and is derived from Arabic and Eastern words meaning "kept boy" or "male prostitute." "Berdache" was used by explorers to explain to Western cultures how many Native traditions held a special reverence for two-spirit peoples to the earliest time, especially the Lakota, Ojibwa, Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Mojave, Navajo and Cree tribes (others, such as the Comanche, Eyak, Iroquois and many Apache bands did not often recognize the existence of two-spirits). Two-spirit peoples were thought to have both male and female persons living within the same body, and a two-spirited child's gender would be determined at puberty, based on their inclination toward masculine or feminine activities. In the last century, modern Christianity had "evangelized," indoctrinated and destroyed many Native traditions, and two-spirit people are only now just re-emerging from homophobic stigmas.

1992 -- Nancy Jean Burkholter is ejected from the Michigan Womyn's Festival by transphobic festival organizers. The festival's policy is that the particularity of "womyn-born-womyn (WBW) experience comes from being born and raised in a female body. The following year, Camp Trans would be set up outside the entrance to the gate in protest of this policy -- and continued three years following.

1993 -- Cheryl Chase founds the Intersex Society of North America (ISNA).
"March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation" organizers include bisexuals, but refuse to include transgender in the name of the march, despite months of work to try to get inclusion.

Trans activists working for many years with gay and lesbian activists successfully pass an anti-discrimination law in the State of Minnesota, protecting transsexual and transgendered people along with gays and lesbians. This is the first instance of inclusion in the U.S. despite the number of human rights motions since the 1970s to protect rights based on sexual orientation.

Brandon Teena is raped and later murdered by members of his circle of friends, when they discover his female genitalia. The story is later retold with an Oscar-winning performance in the movie, Boys Don't Cry.

Anthony Summers publishes Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover, in which the rumor that Hoover was a transvestite is finally put into print. In the book, a Mrs. Susan Rosenstiel alleged that in 1958 she and her husband met Hoover and McCarthy lawyer Roy Cohn, both in drag. Several writers since have strongly discredited Mrs. Rosenstiel, and it is most likely that Hoover's crossdressing is merely an urban legend. He may have been gay, however, as some (possibly circumstantial) information about he and right-hand man Clyde Tolson is more creditable.

1994 -- Transgender activists protest exclusion from Stonewall25 celebrations and The Gay Games in New York City. The Gay Games later rescinds rules that require "documented completion of sex change" before allowing transgendered individuals to compete.
Several cities on the west coast of the U.S. pass anti-discrimination statues protecting transsexual and transgendered people.

Hijras in India are given the right to vote. Within 5 years, a hijra will be elected as a Member of Parliament. Hijras are third-gender persons, usually male or intersex in origin, and living as female. Estimates range between 50,000 and 5,000,000 hijras currently living in the Indian subcontinent alone. Although early English writings referred to them as eunuchs, not all undergo castration. Hijras are limited by caste, must train under a teacher, and are considered low class. Violence against hijras is common, and the authorities continnue to be slow to do anything about the problem.

Mid-1990s -- Prominent and respected lesbian writer, activist and therapist Pat (now Patrick) Califia comes out as a transman, and begins his transition to male. The lesbian community largely rejects Califia as a consequence, although there are pockets that still show support. Regardless, Califia's writings still strike a chord with many of the alternative lifestyle communities.

1995 -- Transsexual activists protest Oregon's Right to Privacy (now known as "Right to Pride") political action committee to cease using Alan Hart's old name as an award given out to lesbian activists. Over the following years, some of his legacy would be regained by the transgender community, and his preferred male name would regain recognition.

Tyra Hunter dies following a traffic accident in Washington, D.C. Her injuries should have been minor, but when the responding EMT team (a crew of D.C. firefighters) arrives on the scene, cut away her clothing and discover her genitalia, and then withdraw medical care, uttering epithets and taunting her as she bleeds. When she is finally taken to D.C. General Hospital, she is also given inadequate care and dies from blood loss. In 1998, a jury awards Tyra's mother $2,873,000 after finding the District of Columbia (via both the EMTs and Hospital) guilty of negligence and malpractice. Several activist groups form in her memory.

Georgina Beyer becomes New Zealand's (and the World's) first transsexual Mayor of Carterton, where she remained until 2000 (see 1999 entry below).

1996 -- JoAnna McNamera of It's Time Oregon successfully convinces Oregon's Bureau of Labor and Industry (BOLI) that transsexuals are protected under existing Oregon labor law dealing with discrimination of people with disabilities and medical conditions. This made Oregon the third state to extend employment protection to transgendered people, following Minnesota and Nebraska.

Michael Alig is arrested for the murder of "Angel" Melendez over a drug debt. The arrest draws national attention to the Club Kids, an often-crossdressing troupe of wildly costumed teens in New York in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The Club Kids fall from grace and eventually vanish. The story is later chronicled in James St. James' memoir, Disco Bloodbath, and in a movie and documentary, both entitled, Party Monster. Of particular significance, the famous female impersonator RuPaul was discovered during the Club Kids' tour of the talk show circuit, roughly around 1988, and then catapults to fame in a music video for the B-52's single, Love Shack.

1997 -- Milton Diamond and Dr. H. Keith Sigmundson publish a paper that expose John Money's claims of success in the "John/Joan" case. Sigmundson is David Reimer's supervising psychiatrist at that time, and the two describe Reimer's literal quest to regain his manhood. Diamond goes on to found the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality.

1998 -- John Colapinto publishes As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised As A Girl, telling David Reimer's story in depth, on the heels of a pivotal Rolling Stone article on the subject. Ongoing troubles would plague Reimer, however, including divorce, the death of his twin brother, family strain and more -- Reimer commits suicide in 2004.

Transgender activists once again protest exclusion from The Gay Games in Amsterdam, this time with modified rules from those previously rescinded in the last Games: that competitors require documented completion of sex change or two years on hormones before being able to compete. FTM transman, photographer Loren Cameron drops out of competition in protest, but Israeli MTF singer Dana International still performs at the Games' festivities.

Japan allows the first legal gender reassignment surgery (SRS) to be performed on an FTM transsexual.

Hayley Cropper, a transsexual character, first appears on the popular British soap opera Coronation Street.

Nong Toom, a Thai kathoey (female-to-male transgendered person) enters professional boxing, despite being on hormones, and becomes a cross-dressing legend. She would later go on to have SRS surgery, and her story is told in the subtitled movie, Beautiful Boxer.

1999 -- Since the Michigan Womyn's Festival (a noteworthy and popular lesbian community event) continues to exclude transwomen and refuse to acknowledge them as being women, Camp Trans is revived to protest. Initially, post-op MTF transsexuals are allowed to attend, but confrontations occur. The exclusion and the protests would continue annually.

In a Texas court, in Littleton vs. Prang, Christine Littleton (a post-op MTF transsexual) loses her case against the doctor who she contended negligently allowed her husband to die... because, as the defense argues, even though her birth certificate has been amended to denote "female," it had originally read "male," and since same-sex marriage is not permitted in Texas, she was not legally his widow or entitled to anything on behalf of his estate.

Dr. Scott Kerlin founds the DES Sons International Network, an online support and advocacy group for children exposed to Di-Ethyl Stilbestrol (DES) in utero, fighting the perception that DES is strictly a womens' health issue. When DES Sons is only a few months old, a new member raises the issue that he had always felt that he was a girl, and was, in fact, transsexual. This initiates a flood of confessions about other members' own gender identity issues, and quickly becomes one of the dominant themes raised by male children of DES births (although not all DES Sons experience transgender leanings). DES Trans is later set up by Kerlin and Dr. Dana Beyer as a seperate support group for this discussion.

Pvt. Barry Winchell is murdered by fellow soldiers, resparking a questioning of the "don't ask don't tell" policy of the U.S. Military. He is murdered because of allegations that arise from his relationship with transwoman Calpernia Addams. Their story is retold in the 2003 movie, Soldier's Girl. Addams later starts the TSroadmap website with Andrea James, and the two collaborate on several projects to assist transwomen.

Mayor Georgina Beyer becomes New Zealand's (and the World's) first transsexual Member of Parliament. She remains there until her resignation in 2007.

Robert Eads dies of ovarian cancer. A transman, Eads is denied treatment by more than two dozen doctors out of fears that taking him on as a patient might be an embarassment to their practice. His story is told (in his own words) in the award-winning documentary, Southern Comfort.

2000 -- The Transgender Pride flag is designed by Monica Helms, and is first shown at a pride parade in Phoenix, Arizona, USA.

2001 -- Erin Lindsey begins producing Venus Envy, a popular ongoing webcomic strip focusing on the life of Zoë Carter, a young transsexual girl living in Salem, Pennsylvania.

Canadian cyclist Michelle Dumaresq enters the sport of downhill bike racing, six years after her SRS surgery. She would go on to win battles with Cycling BC and the Canadian Cycling Association to compete, win the 2002 Canada Cup series, win the 2003 Canadian National Championships and score additional victories. At the 2006 Canadian Nationals, a protest from one of her competitors during the podium ceremonies would bring renewed attention to Dumaresq's participation in female sports: the boyfriend of second-place finisher Danika Schroeter would jump up onto the podium and helped Schroeter put on a t-shirt reading "100% Pure Woman Champ."

2002 -- Gwen "Lida" Araujo is murdered by several partygoers, who had discovered her male genitalia. The three men who were charged alternately resorted to panic strategies during their defense, trying to minimize (i.e. to a charge of "Manslaughter") or legitimize their actions because of their apparent shock at the discovery.

The International Olympic Committee amends policy to allow transexuals to compete as their reassigned gender if the surgery has taken place at least two years prior to the competition and if the athlete has been on a regimen of hormones equal to that of a person born to the gender.

The Transgender Law Center is founded, and works toward protecting and entrenching the rights of transgendered persons in California, as well as assisting legal activists elsewhere.

Author and activist Leslie Feinberg publishes Transgender Liberation: A Movement Whose Time Has Come. She would later publish the well-known works Stone Butch Blues (1993), and Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman (1996).

The Centurion, a modified form of metoidioplasty is introduced for female-to-male transsexuals.
2003 -- Calpernia Addams and Andrea James found Deep Stealth Productions and TS Roadmap, invaluable resources for transwomen. Deep Stealth produces video work providing advice on voice therapy and makeup / presentation, and TS Roadmap covers the entire spectrum of MTF transition, in free online written advice.

Jennifer Finney Boylan's memoir, She's Not There, becomes the first-known best-selling work by a transgendered American.

In Lawrence v. Texas, the U.S. Supreme Court arrives at a 6-3 ruling that strikes down the prohibition of homosexual sodomy in Texas, and declares that such laws are unconstitutional. Several other states still have anti-sodomy laws on the books, but they are now not as frequently enforced.

2004 -- The Gender Recognition Act 2004 is passed in the U.K., allowing transgendered persons to legally change their sex and have it recognized for the purposes of marriage and other issues.

Dee Palmer (born David Palmer), former member of the rock band Jethro Tull, comes out as an MTF transsexual. A former member of the group Toto also comes out at around this time, but I've lost the reference.

2005 -- Although homosexuality had been delisted as a mental disorder in 1973, transgenderism is still listed in the DSM-IV. However, a new wave of thinking has transsexuality and transgenderism linked to more biological factors, such as DNA predisposition, or DES. Books of the time begin to reflect this, including Deborah Rudacille's The Riddle of Gender.

2006 -- The Gwen Araujo Justice for Victims Act becomes law. The bill, fueled by the murder of Gwen Araujo and 2004 murder of Joel Robles (in which the defendant plea-bargained his way down to a 4-month sentence), prevents defendants from using panic strategies and potential biases against the victim to minimize their actions.

Dr. Ben Barres writes a highly-noted article in Nature refuting an earlier theory by Lawrence Summers and others that there are fewer female scientists than male because of a difference in "intrinsic aptitude." In his paper, Barres notes the differences in treatment of female scientists from male ones, drawing from his own experiences in both genders.

One of the directors of the Matrix movies, formerly / currently known as Larry Wachowski, is reported by Rolling Stone Magazine to be transitioning to female, in an unflattering article. This website supports lifestyles that are practiced safely, responsibly, consensually and respectfully, and as Lana's choice of partner is a known proponent of those things, we support Lana's choice -- and do not cast judgement on those things that we don't know the full story about.

Dr. Russell Reid, a U.K. psychiatrist specializing in gender reassignment, is brought under investigation from accusations that he inappropriately treated five patients, allegedly fast-tracking them, in contradiction of established standards of care. Although not the first time a doctor has been brought under fire or threat of legal action for his work (some had even been sued by their transgender patients), the high-profile case reopens major debates in the medical community about transsexuality and its treatment.

Cult favorite TV-show, The L Word, introduces a female-to-male transsexual. Max (Moira) is the first regularly-occurring FTM character in the history of television *and* the first transgender character to transition during the course of a show. Actress Daniela Sea is no stranger to performing as male, but some trans activists take issue with the series portrayal, saying that it is "based on the stereotype that transmen are driven by and use testosterone as an excuse to become abusive, violent, and over-sexualized" (Eli Green, PetitionSpot.com petition).

Chinese surgeons perform the world's first penis transplant successfully (however, the patient later has it removed at the request of his wife, who has psychological objections), raising a question about the possibility of developing a similar option for transmen. Such a development is still likely years away, however, because of the need to find ways to deal with the differences in the underlying infrastructure.

2007 -- The rock-star character of "Zarf," who debuted on the soap opera All My Children near the end of 2006, comes out as a male-to-female transsexual, Zoey. Although this isn't the first time a soap opera featured a transgendered character in a recurring role (Coronation Street was the second -- the first was an obscure overseas soap whose name I cannot recall -- Mercy), it is the first to feature an MTF character (and second only to The L Word to feature a transsexual) in the beginning of her transition, and follow the process along. (Rather than alienate AMC's viewers, Zoey appears to be re-energizing them).

40-year-old Chanda Musalman, who lives as both man and woman and has not had any GRS surgery, is granted both male and female citizenship by Nepali authorities, in the first known case of dual-gender recognition. It is unclear how this unique legal status will play out in practice - for instance, how it will affect Chanda's marriage rights.

The Supreme Court of Canada refuses to hear Kimberly Nixon v. Rape Relief, a case in which the transwoman was dismissed from rape counselling because she was not born female (she had been living as female several years and is legally female). Because it was refused at that level, the B.C. Court of Appeal ruling against her still stands -- a ruling which pointed out that transgender people are not currently protected by the Human Rights Charter under either category of gender or sexual orientation.

A 12-year old in Vienna, Austria is thought to be the youngest person in the world to begin a sex change procedure.

Heartsick

"And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight in a bud was greater than the risk it took to blossom." (Anais Nin)

The quote comes back to me as I put together a brochure commemorating those who we'll be honoring at the Transgender Day of Remembrance on November 20th. There's 19 more names to add to the list this year... a list that covers victims of anti-transgender violence from 1970 to present, and is so long that I had to shrink the text to an almost illegible size in order to fit it on the page.

One of the earliest transgender functions I attended was the TDoR in 2005. I can't think of a more sobering way to assess the risk of blossoming than to hear that list of names of those who lost their lives strictly because of the hatred there is toward transgendered people.

The risk touches everything. Right now, I'm trying to compose a response to my mother, who is telling me that if I have to transition, then I should prepare myself for the likelihood of not having a relationship with my family ever again. My heart feels sick, listening to the pain they're going through, trying to cope. I'm thinking at this point that I should just cut the ties myself, so that they can finally start to heal and move on. If it would be better for them in the long run, then I suppose I may have to. I don't think they'll ever understand that the person that they "love just the way you are" was never truly the person that I am -- that it was a carefully-constructed facade of what I knew they wanted to see, and that I faked being for over three decades. I don't think they'll ever understand why I can't go back to living that lie. I don't think they'll ever understand that I'm not doing this to hurt them -- that I'm doing this because it is the only way that I can stop hurting.

"And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight in a bud was greater than the risk it took to blossom." (Anais Nin)

When you think about the risks it takes to blossom, of losing your job, your family, your friends, your apartment, your significant other -- or of one day facing that feral hatred in the eyes of someone who wants to beat you to death simply because of who you are -- if it's greater, then the risk to remain in the bud seems unfathomable.

Not all of those killed from anti-transgendered violence are people who choose to transition. Mikey Vallejo-Seiber was a 3-year-old who died from internal injuries suffered after being kicked, punched and dropped on his head in an attempt to make the "sissy" boy "toughen up." Others might perhaps be casual crossdressers, who didn't expect that the risk of an evening out could be so great. But most are, and this speaks not only to how much hatred there is out there, but also how compelling the need to transition often really is.

As I sat in the congregation at my first Transgender Day of Remembrance memorial, I realized that my name could one day be on that list. I also realized that what I was aiming for would be worth that risk.

I often liken it to the difference between suffocation and breathing. In my best-known art piece (the torso of a cyborg, questioning her existence), I refer to it as the difference between consciousness and life. Even then, in those few days before, the freedom of being able to express outwardly the person I felt I was inside was liberating beyond belief. One year later, I have far more experiences which have only reaffimred what I've probably known all along.

This was fortified by my first real relationship as a woman. In every other relationship, I'd still had to maintain that automaton facade. Before, it was like stepping mostly into the relationship, but keeping that one foot still there anchored behind me, restricting how far I could go. I realize now, how vastly unfair this was to my ex-wife.

But this time, I was able to jump wholly in, no facades, no games, no cover-ups. Sure, there was a lot I was shy about sharing, but I could still jump in. And everything that had been missing before was there for me now, as a consequence.

The relationship ended. The hurt was far more than I could have expected. But still, it told me clearly that the direction I'm going is exactly what I need to breathe; to live -- which are exactly what I had not been doing, in the last 3+ decades.

Someday, I suppose, I or any one of us could be on that list. If that were to happen, I pray that it happens quickly, with not a lot of pain. But more than that, I pray that there will be several months or years in bloom.

TransReactions I

I just thought I'd collect some reactions that have stood out in the four months that I've started living full-time, outside of work. I'll add italics where needed, to add context.

I tend to pass reasonably well now -- on my good days, no one can tell and even my voice sometimes doesn't throw them off; on my bad days, about half of the people around me can "read" me. It's an interesting mix of reactions from people, when they do. Sometimes it's as simple as a distasteful snarl of the nose or widening of the eyelids or a warming smile, but sometimes the reactions are more noteworthy.

Also included are reactions from people when I've come out to them.

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Pharmacist at London Drugs, when I went as female in to pick up my prescription written up in my male name: "You're picking up for someone else?"
Me: "No"
Pharmacist: "Well, this can't be..." (it was about this time that he looked at the prescription and read "Premarin," making the connection. He was still nice to me after that. This was a far better reaction than when I first had this prescription filled in boy-mode, and a different pharmacist was reading the list of precautions to me... he reached the part where it read "may increase bust size," the realization hit him, and he immediately dropped the prescription on the counter, and rang it in the till without looking or talking to me. I had to read the total from the debit screen).

One of my staff, M, when I had to make an unexpected stop at the store before I was "out" to my staff: "Hi, W. Nice hair."

M the next day, when we were more able to talk about it: "I hope you're not worried that what happened is going to change my opinion of you...."
Sweet kid.

WalMart security, about a minute and a half after I'd stopped a WalMart staffer and asked for directions: "We're going to have to ask you to leave...."

While I was still not "out" at work, I avoided shopping close to home, in case staff or local customers would see and recognize me. One exception I made was the CD Plus store in Londonderry Mall. I'd gone there a couple of times as female in the weeks earlier, and then one afternoon, not thinking, stopped in after work, in boy mode. One of the clerks immediately swooped around me to ask if I needed help, and after I'd said "just looking," he still hovered nearby, trying to look inconspicuous. When I went to buy something, he drifted over to the till, and I noticed him trying to get a peek at the debit card I was using (I have an old old TD debit card that I haven't replaced, because all the new cards get names stamped on them). As I turned to leave, I heard the following exchange with another clerk:
Him: That is her! That is so her! That's the girl I was telling you about!"
Other clerk: Who, him?
Him: Yeah, her!
This one really made me feel good. Here I was in boy-mode, and he was still calling me a "her." Not only that, he corrected his friend on it. Someone gets it!

Medicenter doctor (66th St. and Fort Road): "Well, it's definitely an ear infection. What medications are you currently taking?"
Me: "Lorazepam on occasion, plus Cyproterone and, um, Premarin."
Medicenter doctor: (long pause) Um, no. (another pause) No. You're going to have to see someone else.
At this, he left, and another nurse appeared after a minute or so and told me that because I had refused to see that doctor (somehow thinking it was the other way around), I would have to rejoin the queue -- it had already taken me 3 hours in that queue to get in, in the first place. I left.

The reactions at the Edmonton Downtown Police station were more visual than dialogue-noteworthy on the three points of contact I had with them. I went in the first time to get the fingerprinting done that I would need to do my legal name change, having been told on the phone that I didn't need an appointment. Well, as it turns out, I did need an appointment, and so I had to leave the first time, call to make an appointment, and then returned on the appropriate day. In both visits plus the call for appointment, there was a definite shift in attitude. In each of the three times, the people I spoke with started out a little snarky and disinterested... or more likely jaded. I'm guessing that many of the people they see about legal name changes are people they tend to instantly feel distrust for or cynicism. Anyway, in all three cases, once the people found out that I was changing gender, they were all surprised and were instantly warmer toward me.

More reactions to follow, as I chronicle the reactions of people at work, during my coming-out....

(Trans)Woman In Progress: Childhood Confessions

At work recently, we had a mother and daughter in the store, with the mother looking through color samples while the kid kept everyone preoccupied.

She was hyperactive, probably ADHD, but with the kind of charming warmth that you don't really mind and she didn't really drive us crazy. We have a kids' center, and at one point, she was pulling out a toy loader / dump truck, with the mother telling her to put it back -- although the mother didn't seem to object to any of the other toys. The child was asking us questions about color, wanting to see the tint machine and how it worked, wanted to know where we kept the coffee for the coffee pot and asked the girls on staff if they were sisters.

And then the conversation with her mother took a bit of a different turn, when it was nearly time for them to go. They had to get ready for some kind of function (a birthday party for someone? I didn't hear that part):

Girl: "I'm not going to have to wear a dress, am I?"
Mother: "Don't be silly. Of course, you're going to wear a dress."
Girl: "But I don't like dresses. Girls wear dresses."
Mother: "And you're a girl."
Girl: "But I don't want to be."

The protest was actually somewhat longer than that -- I can't remember it word for word. But it was obvious that neither mother nor child were happy about each others' thoughts on the situation. I had to excuse myself and lock myself in the office so I could bawl for awhile. It was just like that, as plain and matter-of-fact as kids are. The poor kid really has no idea the hell in store for him.

We always know. We always know. But then we're taught that the idea is silly, that we're wrong. Later, we begin to think something's wrong with us, to feel the way we do. We bury it. We try to live the way we're told that we're supposed to. We do everything conceivable to hide it, always conscious of anything that we might do that might seem effeminate or masculine. And sometimes we mask ourselves so completely that we start to believe it for awhile... until everything comes crashing down around us.

One of the hardest things for the people we care about and who we come out to to understand is how we can have known all of our lives, and yet given little or no indication to them for so many years. This usually leads to a wall of disbelief and doubt that persists for awhile, until the person realizes that this isn't just a momentary flip decision we've made.

But that's how it starts. In the beginning, we're told "Don't be silly. Don't be ridiculous." Probably, the mothers and fathers and aunts and teachers and everyone else telling us this are so convinced that what we're doing is "just a phase" that it barely registers in their memory, but the constant repetition of this mantra eventually makes it pretty clear to us that what we're feeling isn't socially acceptable. Later, it turns from casual chiding into teasing and scorn, until we learn to hide it well enough.



I remember looking at my baby pictures when I was very young, and asking why I was wearing blue dresses, pink dresses, etc., and being told that it was a common practice. This changed a belief that I'd had that I should have been a girl into more of a conviction that I HAD been one, and something was being hidden from me. And although my parents still tell me that this never happened, I'm still quite sure that I remember having in the keepsakes box that my mother had made both a pink and a blue baby bracelet, and being told that the hospital had simply made a mistake. I remember thinking that it was the blue bracelet which was a mistake. Sometime around when I was 8, the pink bracelet disappeared. I suppose it could have been a dream, but it still seems so real to me.

Growing up, early birthdays and Christmases found me unwrapping a football or a skateboard or a Tonka tractor, to which I had to feign delight, not wanting my parents to feel disappointed. But what I really preferred to play with was a little Thumbelina doll that no one really remembered where it came from. It was a tiny big-headed princess that I related to and was both confidante and proxy for all the little fantasies I had racing around my brain. At some time around when I turned 6, the little Thumbelina disappeared, and while I tried not to let anyone see me do it (knowing it was "wrong" to grieve over this particular toy, which I wasn't supposed to be attached to), I cried for days. Child or not, I was still apt enough to figure out that my parents had done something with it, because they'd felt I was too attached to it. I think this is what most strongly told me that I would have to hide what I was feeling.

My mother likes to laugh and tell everyone how I came home one day crying because one of the neighborhood boys had called me a "twinkletoes." I don't remember the start of the incident, but I remember that I was trying very hard to be a boy and be what was expected of me. And the accusation hurt most because it meant that I'd failed. Every time someone insinuated otherwise, it was very hurtful. And it was insinuated often, long into high school. Although I wasn't (to my knowledge) visibly the kind of person that would trip the gaydar so to speak, people did consider me effeminate and strange. I never dated in High School. I had one girl ask me to a dance once, which completely shocked me. But I remember realizing even then that there was a lot about me that I would have to hide from her, and feeling that at some point I would be incompatible and probably freak her out.

I was about 11 when I first heard the word "transvestite." It doesn't accurately describe me (it's not about clothes), but at that time I didn't know it. The word was spoken on television in a context that I was actually able to figure out what it meant. I pretended to be ambivalent to the program, exited the room and went upstairs to my bedroom where I cried all night.

I realized that if there actually was a word for it in the English language, then I wasn't the only one. Until then, I'd felt alone in my freakishness -- that in all of creation, I must have been the only kid out there to be so f---ed up. This was only compounded by my religious beliefs, with this constant cycle of shame and begging forgiveness and inevitably feeling drawn back into the feminine world only to once again become filled with shame that made me so desperate to earn some form of redemption and deliverance from God. A deliverance which never came.

Now, even though for me gender change isn't about wearing frilly things, in the earliest days I didn't really know that. I was still figuring things out, and tried it just because I was curious about all the things that women do. I tried it when I was about 9 or so, and I got caught. Nearly. It turned out to be a terrifying, humiliating experience as my mother made issue of it. I finally managed to keep hidden under the bed covers and get her to leave me alone, but I'm certain she knew that it was a pair of her underwear pilfered from her dresser that I had on. I was so traumatized by that, that I never dared to try again.

A couple days later, while she was putting her makeup on, she offered to show me how, like it was a snide joke.

When I got a little older, my toys gravitated toward Star Wars action figures, and then later G.I.Joes. For me, they were dolls, just on a smaller scale. Princess Leia would be my protagonist, for whom everyone would lust and love and try to possess. Later, it was Scarlett, and then (because I liked the figure's hair more) The Baroness. I didn't care that I couldn't dress or undress her. In the Baroness, I had a proxy by which I could live out a myriad of weird and wonderful adventures.

My sister was also growing out of diapers by then, and was playing with Strawberry Shortcakes and the like. This was a godsend, because not only could I play dolls within a socially-acceptable situation (my parents didn't panic, because I was entertaining my sister), I also had a playmate to enjoy the time with. But I felt that the clock was ticking -- that I could only do that for so long before someone started catching on.

I played with my G.I.Joes for far longer than was healthy, when it came right down to it. Until age 18 or 19, they were still a guilty pleasure. They were my escape. The real world was a place where classmates called you sissy and humiliated you constantly. The real world was a place where you had to take on a meaningless part-time job at the Dairy Queen and later as a janitor, to eke out a miserable living in hopes of one day being able to move out and support yourself. The real world was a place where you had to do everything possible to try to "pass" as a man, in order to be accepted. Escapism was my only real opportunity to explore the life I felt I needed to live. Even if only with a pathetic proxy.

I've always tried to "pass" as a man. I had to train myself to have a deeper voice, as it barely deepened naturally. I also tried practicing walking to try to mimic my dad, but I could never convince kids at school that I was big or tough enough to pull off that kind of a look. Then I tried to mimic Steve Austin (The Six Million Dollar Man). Then it was the Fonz. Then, it was (don't laugh) George Jefferson. Yeah, yeah, hey, I was a kid. Whatever. By my teens, my acting had improved somewhat -- especially with my discovery of the knuckle-dragging principle -- and it was about then that I discovered the stage persona of (don't laugh) Andrew Dice Clay. Fortunately, by that time, I was more selective. I didn't care for the arrogance or overdone posturing, but did like the smooth motion, the casual, careless, slangy abandon. With sometimes hours of daily practice, I became more convincing.



The feeling of alienation and freakishness is in everything. The self-consciousness of being certain that people are snickering behind your back, the feeling of defeatism when you look at your goals and realize that they're not going to fulfill you even if you attempt to complete them, the unearthly sensation when you are holding your lover and touching her that you're in fact on the wrong side of the equation... your whole self-image goes completely down the drain, because you believe that this is all the result of a character flaw -- that it's your fault, something is wrong with you, and that you're to blame, because you can't fix or walk away from it.

If I have found anything in my transition, it is the ability to look in the mirror and to see someone who I feel comfortable to be, someone truer to what I feel, someone I can finally admire and respect, someone who now has the opportunity to live some of the life I felt I was supposed to have.

Which is something that I always knew I needed, but always felt I had to run away from.