#transsexual history

[queeringourhistory]

Poly-gendered pin, circa 1990, Canada.

[groovyfags]

A book ad from One, the Homosexual Magazine (March 1954)

[she-is-ovarit]

Trans History (long post sorry)

This post uses "transsexual" in place of "transgender" as this was the widespread accepted terminology until fairly recently and is what was used in the original source for this information.

In 1885 the Criminal Law Act was passed which made homosexual behavior illegal in the UK. Transvestites within the gay movement were easier to identify publicly and became easy targets.

Ernest "Stella" Boulton and Fred "Franny" Park were arrested in 1870 for indecent behavior and attempted to be persecuted on the grounds of cross dressing instead of sodomy. They were let go.

Because of these laws, homosexual transvestites began to seek out doctors to "cure" them. These doctors and researchers were called sexologists. Krafft-Ebbing (1840-1902), professor of psychiatry at Vienna was one of the first to be interested in transvestitic behavior.

Magnus Hirschfeld was another, a Germon sexologist, and his works were considered groundbreaking during the times.

At Hirschfeld's clinic, Dr. Felix Abraham performed the first transsexual operations in 1926 on an unnamed trans man, penectomy on his domestic servant Dora in 1930, and vaginoplasty on Lili Elbe who would die from complications from the procedure.

Christine Jorgeson, former American GI, underwent several transsexual operations and drew attention from the media. The media immediately focused on the appearance of Christine, "Ex-GI Becomes Blonde Beauty". This essentially was effective marketing and brought transsexualism into the public eye. Jorgeson's psychiatrist, Dr. Hamburger (yes really) began to receive a ton of letters from people wanting to change their sex because they wanted to escape homophobia or live in/be associated with the gender roles associated with the other sex.

This caused a bunch of doctors to start their own clinics because they smelled money, such as endocrinologist Harry Benjamin (who trained at Hirschfield's clinic). He went on to publish the first medical textbook on transsexuality called the Transsexual Phenomenon in 1966 and personally began training a bunch of other doctors in the subject. His clinic was based in New York. Dr. Elmer Belt opened up clinics in Los Angeles. Dr. Georges Burou specialized in penicile skin inversion vaginoplasty in Casablanca.

Janice Irvine wrote of transsexualism's "widespread public and professional acceptance" as early as the 1970s. While gay men and women practicing transvestitism were originally criticized (because it was essentially homosexual people defying gender norms associated with their sex), transsexuality on the other hand was almost immediately accepted. Transsexualist origins lie in doctors attempting to "correct" the genitalia of people with disorders of sex development, homosexual people fearing for their lives and attempting to escape incarceration for being homosexual, and (mostly homosexual) people feeling wrong for not conforming to the mannerisms, expressions, and style associated with their sex, culturally.

While the beginnings of transsexual medicine began in the 1950s, with interest in the subject by psychiatrists dating back since the early 1900s, most "treatment facilities" for homosexuality, paraphilias, and gender nonconformity transsexuals became widespread in the 1960s and 1970s. Ira Pauly in 1965 who was a professor of psychiatry at the University of Oregon counted a total of 603 "male to female" transsexuals and 162 "female to male" transsexuals. He then reported on post-operative adjustment of 121 of these people, describing it as successful. He voiced a cautious psychiatric support for transsexualism based on this, stating that since psychology seems to have failures in reverting it and until alternative procedures or treatments are discovered, it was the best approach society had for this demographic.

I mentioned disorders of sex development (DSDs, commonly called "intersex conditions") above. Transsexualism has been closely associated with people with DSDs. In the 1950s, protocols were established for doctors to determine the sex of infants with DSDs, which was a rare anomaly. These infants bodies would then be modified to "correctly" correspond with whatever sex they were assigned by doctors. Transsexualism and the correction of "intersexualism" overlapped because doctors studying transsexualism borrowed procedures used to "correct" infants with DSDs.

Robert Stoller, a professor of psychiatry in California and considered to be a famous transsexual expert by the 1970s, began to focus on badly constructed genetalia. John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore became a headquarters for "treating" both "intersexuality" and "transsexuality". More texts were published: Transsexual Sex Reassignment (1969) by Richard Green and John Money, and The Transsexual Experiment (1975) by Robert Stoller. French psychoanalyst Catherine Millot commented, "there was a sense in which there was no transsexuality before experts like Benjamin and Stoller 'invented it'." There was rare support for transsexuality in 1965, but by 1975 about twenty major medical centers were offering treatment to thousands of transsexual people.

It took until 1977 for transsexual surgeries to be presented to the American Psychiatric Association. By that time "normalization of sex reassignment" was institutionalized and thus "assumed" by John K. Meyer and Donna J. Reter of the APA.

However, when Reter and Meyer by their very forced hands assumed the "normalization" of sex reassignment, they at the same time cast public doubt on it and it's "almost routine acceptance".

While medical doctors and psychiatrists pushed sex reassignment surgery, psycho-analysts almost always remained doubtful of it. A well-known psychoanalyst from New York, Lawrence S. Kubie, publicly rejected and renounced the term "transsexual" completely, suggesting "genital transmutation" was a more accurate fit. He criticized the term "transsexual" stating that the word was too simple for such a complex phenomenon, and falsely alluded that problems had been solved when in reality, they weren't. He illuminated that there were many men at this time that wish to appear as women but to consider themselves and be considered as men who "simulate women", but needed to present themselves as "textbook transsexuals" in order for physicians to agree to alter them. So, these transvestites fell under pressure to conform as transsexuals.

Kubie and his co-author James B. Mackie argued that the concept of transsexualism was a combination of both false diagnoses and lack of clarity on patients, with "emotionally charged" and "dramatic" medical intervention.

Even Robert Stoller in 1973 voiced his own unease in an article he wrote for the American Journal of Psychiatry, describing a "carnival atmosphere that prevails in the management of male transsexualism". Just the patient's request for sex reassignment brought immediate acceptance. By this point, many homosexual transvestites were educating themselves on SRS and HRT to have their sex modified to avoid homophobic persecution, and many even knew more about these procedures than their doctors. Stoller went on to write:

The conservative view among medical professionals at this time was to convince transsexual people/transvestites that they were really the other sex.

Homosexual sociologist Edward Sagarin wrote in a book on "deviants" in 1969 that male-to-female transsexuals suffered from "doubly unacceptable" self-imagery in being both homosexual and feminine, and that the solution was to convince them that they were really women and not men.

Additionally, there were striking observations made of the behaviors of a subset of people seeking sex-reassignment surgeries and hormone treatments:

John Money, the sexologist who infamously forcibly transitioned an intersex child by the name of David Reimer, also described transsexual male people as "devious, demanding, and manipulative"

Meanwhile, L.M. Lothstein who pioneered a study on female-to-male transsexuals in the 1970s and 1980s diagnosed FTM transsexuality as a "profound psychological disorder", describing most as having personality disorders and while not psychotic, having thought disorders that affect their ability to relate to others and sense their reality. Lothstein felt that the solution to help transsexual people didn't lie in surgeries or hormone treatments, but in psychotherapy. He hesitantly felt that it was possible SRS and HRT was needed before psychotherapy to "disrupt their rigid defensive structure".

I'm writing a lot so I'll stop here. Sorry for the abrupt end. I might add more later as a reblog. But here is the primary source that I essentially heavily paraphrased.

[endusviolence]

Rowling isn't denying holocaust. She just pointed out that burning of transgender health books is a lie as that form of cosmetic surgery didn't exist. But of course you knew that already, didn't you?

I was thinking I'd probably see one of you! You're wrong :) Let's review the history a bit, shall we?

In this case, what we're talking about is the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, or in English, The Institute of Sexology. This Institute was founded and headed by a gay Jewish sexologist named Magnus Hirschfeld. It was founded in July of 1919 as the first sexology research clinic in the world, and was run as a private, non-profit clinic. Hirschfeld and the researchers who worked there would give out consultations, medical advice, and even treatments for free to their poorer clientele, as well as give thousands of lectures and build a unique library full of books on gender, sexuality, and eroticism. Of course, being a gay man, Hirschfeld focused a lot on the gay community and proving that homosexuality was natural and could not be "cured".

Hirschfeld was unique in his time because he believed that nobody's gender was either one or the other. Rather, he contended that everyone is a mixture of both male and female, with every individual having their own unique mix of traits.

This leads into the Institute's work with transgender patients. Hirschfeld was actually the one to coin the term "transsexual" in 1923, though this word didn't become popular phrasing until 30 years later when Harry Benjamin began expanding his research (I'll just be shortening it to trans for this brief overview.) For the Institute, their revolutionary work with gay men eventually began to attract other members of the LGBTA+, including of course trans people.

Contrary to what Anon says, sex reassignment surgery was first tested in 1912. It'd already being used on humans throughout Europe during the 1920's by the time a doctor at the Institute named Ludwig Levy-Lenz began performing it on patients in 1931. Hirschfeld was at first opposed, but he came around quickly because it lowered the rate of suicide among their trans patients. Not only was reassignment performed at the Institute, but both facial feminization and facial masculization surgery were also done.

The Institute employed some of these patients, gave them therapy to help with other issues, even gave some of the mentioned surgeries for free to this who could not afford it! They spoke out on their behalf to the public, even getting Berlin police to help them create "transvestite passes" to allow people to dress however they wanted without the threat of being arrested. They worked together to fight the law, including trying to strike down Paragraph 175, which made it illegal to be homosexual. The picture below is from their holiday party, Magnus Hirschfeld being the gentleman on the right with the fabulous mustache. Many of the other people in this photo are transgender.

[Image ID: A black and white photo of a group of people. Some are smiling at the camera, others have serious expressions. Either way, they all seem to be happy. On the right side, an older gentleman in glasses- Magnus Hirschfeld- is sitting. He has short hair and a bushy mustache. He is resting one hand on the shoulder of the person in front of him. His other hand is being held by a person to his left. Another person to his right is holding his shoulder.]

There was always push back against the Institute, especially from conservatives who saw all of this as a bad thing. But conservatism can't stop progress without destroying it. They weren't willing to go that far for a good while. It all ended in March of 1933, when a new Chancellor was elected. The Nazis did not like homosexuals for several reasons. Chief among them, we break the boundaries of "normal" society. Shortly after the election, on May 6th, the book burnings began. The Jewish, gay, and obviously liberal Magnus Hirschfeld and his library of boundary-breaking literature was one of the very first targets. Thankfully, Hirschfeld was spared by virtue of being in Paris at the time (he would die in 1935, before the Nazis were able to invade France). His library wasn't so lucky.

This famous picture of the book burnings was taken after the Institute of Sexology had been raided. That's their books. Literature on so much about sexuality, eroticism, and gender, yes including their new work on trans people. This is the trans community's Alexandria. We're incredibly lucky that enough of it survived for Harry Benjamin and everyone who came after him was able to build on the Institute's work.

[Image ID: A black and white photo of the May Nazi book burning of the Institute of Sexology's library. A soldier, back facing the camera, is throwing a stack of books into the fire. In the background of the right side, a crowd is watching.]

As the Holocaust went on, the homosexuals of Germany became a targeted group. This did include transgender people, no matter what you say. To deny this reality is Holocaust denial. JK Rowling and everyone else who tries to pretend like this isn't reality is participating in that evil. You're agreeing with the Nazis.

But of course, you knew that already, didn't you?

Edit: Added image IDs. I apologize to those using screen readers for forgetting them. Please reblog this version instead.

[killyluisats]

What do you think 😉

[pennymaykittensworld]

I am just a girl with something big under my skirt 🥺 wanna find out ?

[genderqueerdykes]

to whoever needs to hear this: transvestite and transsexual are not slurs. "outdated" queer terms are not inherently slurs. these are literally historically the first 2 terms created and used to talk about the trans community, both coined the first doctor to perform successful trans sex reassignment surgeries, who spent the rest of his career pioneering and paving the way for the modern surgeries we perform today. his name was Magnus Hirschfeld, he was a jewish doctor who began a lifetime of fighting for queer rights due to being moved by the struggles his queer patients went through in terms of not being allowed to accept themselves during the Nazi regime at the time. these are perfectly fine terms that have grown to develop their own distinct meanings and communities over time. this man spent his life fighting for trans and jewish rights during Nazi occupation. any queer term can be used as a slur in the wrong hands. thank you

[piizunn]

butch/twink

2024

quilted white scrap fabric text on a black shirt that reads “BUTCH TWINK”

[michelleotter100]

My bed is really really lonely right about now, I wish there was a way to change that 🥵🥺

[sweatermuppet]

from Illusion: The Magazine for Crossdressers, Drag Queens, & Admirers, Volume 7, Issue 8, 1997

[none-ofthisnonsense]

if anyone has any resources about transgender people in the antiquity (or anything related to that topic) i would love to see them

[justdavina]

Absolutely Amazingly Beautiful Transgender Woman! She's Perfect!

[ts-celine-dijjon]

How would you Love your weekend 😋

I'm kinda bored it's sucks ☺️🤫💋

[killyluisats]

🍆

[pennymaykittensworld]

Would you date girl like me ?🥺

[genderqueerdykes]

"Yes, Transsexual!" is a short zine about the history of the term transsexual, when the term transgender came into usage, and why and how many people still use the term transsexual and how it can be seen as an extremely distinct and important identity for many trans people.