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Why and when did transsexual people begin calling themselves transgender? According to some internet memes transsexuals began self-identifying as transgender due to a vast global plot by crossdressers1,2 . According to this conspiracy, transsexuals by the millions were forced by the media3, through a cunning application of crossdresser colonization 4 to start using the term “transgender” sometime in the mid-1990s by a communist.5 In an ironic twist, the apparent solution to this imagined dilemma is to invent a new term – or string of terms – which means “transgender”6. This meme has survived because, until recently, few seemed to realize that “transgender” was decades older than some seemed to believe. Furthermore, it seems that not many are aware that “transgender” predates the term “transgenderist” – a word whose authorship is almost always erroneously attributed to Virginia Prince.
As we review the historical record, we are presented with a choice. We can choose to believe that “transgender” was shot from the mouth of Virginia Prince straight into the collective hearts of all transsexuals or we can take a more reasoned approach. For instance, since “trans-sexed” originally appeared in print to refer to transgenderists, would it not be absurd for non-transsexual transgender people to spread an internet meme that asserted a global conspiracy on the part of transsexuals to steal this identity away from transgenderists? While it is certainly absurd, this scenario is precisely what has taken place – just in reverse. In this article I will make some reasoned arguments which will attempt to shed some light on why there was a grassroots linguistic tipping point at the end of the 1980s which had trans events/institutions taking on an inclusive semantic in the form of “transgender.”
Cultural context is important and, from what I’ve observed, is oftentimes missing in the various debates concerning transgender terminology. For instance, I have yet to read where a so-called “Transsexual Separatist” acknowledged that nobody in popular culture referred to Christine Jorgensen as a “transsexual” when she came out. In fact, her famous “Christine Jorgensen Reveals” LP is devoid of the term. We tend to forget that it wasn’t until 1966 that the term entered popular culture with the publication of Harry Benjamin’s seminal work, The Transsexual Phenomenon. Furthermore, we’ve all but forgotten that within just 5 years of “transsexual” becoming the new pop-culture buzz word, Christine Jorgensen was rejecting that identity and instead coined a new term to describe her experience. Another nuance that is oftentimes lost in these terminology debates is that “transsexual” was, in fact, designed to be an umbrella term which was explicitly inclusive of both transsexuals and crossdressers.
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To honestly review the evolution of terms trans people have both used and identified with, we must begin with the opinion leaders of the day and the contextual memes they passed on. A “meme” is an “idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture.” Memes are generally defused within a culture through opinion leaders. These memes can take the form of new jargon (or new interpretations of existing terms) and more. Memes influence the way in which groups intuitively think about what is and is not true, correct or desirable.
So, let’s set the stage:
The Early Opinion Leaders
An opinion leader is an agent who is has access to data and who interprets the meaning of that data for lower-end information consumers. For reasons which will become clear, the significant early modern national opinion leaders that interpreted the trans experience and disseminated those interpretations throughout our culture were Harry Benjamin, Christine Jorgensen and Virginia Prince.
Harry Benjamin - While Jorgensen and Prince didn’t know each other (Prince claims to have met Jorgensen once, but didn’t know her personally7), Benjamin knew them both quite well. He popularized a number of terms such as “transsexual,” “transsexualism” and “transsexualist.” Additionally, he wrote what became the transsexual bible for many years to come: his 1966 book, The Transsexual Phenomenon. While Benjamin8 and Prince both shared the belief that one could not truly change one’s sex, unlike Prince, Benjamin felt that genital reconstructive surgery was generally an appropriate response to what was later referred to as significant “gender dysphoria.” The organization which sets the standards of care for the medical and psychological treatment of transsexualism named themselves after Benjamin: The Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association and consequently, for many years those standards also carried his name.
Christine Jorgensen - In her 1958 LP, the interviewer states, “You are without a doubt the world’s most publicized person. There’s the fame, the notoriety, the sensationalism… ” Jorgensen’s story has remained relevant to transsexualism for decades9. No other transsexual reached the type of global notoriety that Jorgensen achieved10. In her book, How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States, author Joanne Meyerowitz writes:
“In 1952 the press discovered Christine Jorgensen and inaugurated a new era of comprehensive, even obsessive, coverage. In the history of sex change in the United States, the reporting on Jorgensen served as both a culminating episode and a starting point.” (2004:49)
In the early newsprint reports, Jorgensen is not referred to as a “transsexual”11. While the term “transsexual” and the name “Christine Jorgensen” later became synonymous, it took 14 years for Jorgensen to be referred to as a “transsexual” in newsprint12. Apparently Jorgensen wasn’t exactly happy with this term being applied to her experiences as Websters Dictionary added “transsex” to their 1971 edition and credited the term’s coinage to Jorgensen. Later in the 1970s, she completely rejected the “transsexual” label and instead began to describe herself as being a transgender person13.
Jorgensen was well acquainted with Benjamin14.
Virginia Prince - In the 1950s, as Jorgensen was educating the public on transsexual issues, Prince began her transgenderist advocacy work15. As such, she became the crossdressing community’s national voice for transgenderist issues16. Prince became one of Benjamin’s patients17 and made quite an impression on Benjamin18. She, like Benjamin, believed that transsexual surgeries did not, in fact, change someone’s authentic sex19. She thought that genital reconstructive surgery was practically always the wrong choice to make20 precisely because she believed that she was dealing with a gender issue and not a sex issue21. Prince used the term “gender” in a way that neither Benjamin nor Jorgensen did.
Prince is credited for coining the term “transgenderist”22 (though Ariadne Kane and Phyllis Frye were using the term before Prince), is given credit for coining the term “transgenderism”23 (though both Kane and Frye were using the term before Prince), is given credit for coining “bigenderal” (though sexologists were using the term before Prince24) and is given erroneous credit for coining “transperson”25 (though Frye was using the term before Prince). Prince is currently given credit for coining the term “transgenderal” as a term meaning transgenderist. Erroneous authorship credit for these terms is often cited as proof of Prince’s authorship of the term, “transgender.”
It should be noted that under the Benjamin Scale of Transsexualism, Prince is a Type 4 or 5 transsexual. Not only did Prince want genital reconstructive surgery26, she took hormones prescribed to her by Benjamin, eventually underwent surgery to make her body appear more feminine and she lived full-time as a woman. Prince rejected the term “transsexual” and rejected the way “gender” was used by people like Benjamin and Jorgensen.
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The Contextual Memes
Transsexual - While it is now known that this term was being used in print as early as 1907, that “transsex” (a term which seems to first show up in 1851) was used to refer to living in a cross-sex gender role as early as 1915, Magnus Hirschfeld is given credit for coining “transsexual” (in German, “seelischer transsexualismus”) in 192327. Later, D. O. Cauldwell used the term “transsexual” to refer to historical transsexuals as well as someone we may have referred to today as being a transsexual28. In 1954 Harry Benjamin used the term “transsexual” and in the same paper coined the terms “transsexualism” ans “transsexualist” to describe people we would certainly call transsexuals today29. Benjamin is responsible for introducing the term into the pop culture lexicon in 1966 with the publication of The Transsexual Phenomenon.
Benjamin used the term “transsexual” to refer to transgenderists and to those who we would today take to be transsexuals. For Benjamin, a transsexual could be someone who lived only part-time in a role opposite to their sex assigned at birth and who did not want to have genital reconstructive surgery (Type 4 Transsexual), someone who perhaps lived full time opposite to their sex assigned at birth but for whom genital reconstructive surgery might or might not be appropriate (Type 5 “True Transsexual”) or the term could have referred to someone who lived full time opposite to their sex assigned at birth and for whom genital reconstructive surgery is always appropriate (Type 6 “True Transsexual”).
While these various types of transsexuals were clearly explained to the public in 1966 via Benjamin’s The Transsexual Phenomenon, pop-culture’s understanding of “transsexual” only seemed to include the Type 6 transsexual. Both Virginia Prince and Christine Jorgensen didn’t seem to appreciate having this term applied to their experience as both of them reacted by taking on other trans terms (Jorgensen, transsex in 1971 and transgender in 1979; Prince, transgenderal in 1969 and transgenderist in 1978).
Gender - By the 1960s, the term “gender change” had become synonymous with the transsexual experience. In 1964, the notion of “gender identity” was born30. In 1965, Johns Hopkins opened their Gender Identity Clinic.31 In 1966, Benjamin wrote in The Transsexual Phenomenon that transsexuals have a “gender problem.”32 By 1967, the American Journal of Psychiatry published the article, Transsexualism and Gender Change.33 On the cover of Christine Jorgensen’s 1968 bio, Benjamin writes:
“Medically, Christine presents an almost classic case of the transsexual phenomenon or, in other words, a striking example of a disturbed gender role orientation.”
That same year, Dr. Harry Gershman brought attention to the idea of “gender identity” in a paper titled, The Evolution of Gender Identity34 and Dr Robert Stoller dedicated a chapter of his book, Sex and Gender to “Gender Identity.”35 This idea was further popularized by John Money and Anke Ehrhardt in 1972.36 By 1974, it was being asserted that transsexuals suffered from “gender dysphoria” – a term which is still used today to describe the transsexual experience.37 By 1979, the standards of care for transsexualism was named the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association Standards of Care and by 1980 “Gender Identity Disorder” (GID) was entered into the DSM-III to cover transsexualism as a psychological disorder.
Prince vehemently argued for many years that gender was akin to a social costume; according to Prince, gender was a state of being within a culture and sexual identity was a state of being conferred upon one’s body38. In Prince’s view, sexual identity was only ever physiological and gender was only ever psycho-social39; for her gender meant cultural sexual roles which involved consumes and behaviors40. She often chided others for not knowing the difference between sex and her definition of gender41. Prince’s notion of gender was at odds with the way in which Jorgensen and Benjamin (and most other sex researchers) used the term. For Jorgensen and Benjamin (and most other sex researchers) gender was more than just cultural sex stereotypes to be taken on 42, it was, as Dr. Stoller wrote in 1964…
Gender identity is the sense of knowing to which sex one belongs, that is, the awareness ‘I am a male’ or ‘I am a female’. This term gender identity’ will be used in this paper rather than various other terms which have been employed in this regard, such as the term ‘sexual identity’. ‘Sexual identity’ is ambiguous, since it may refer to one’s sexual activities or fantasies, etc. The advantage of the phrase ‘gender identity’ lies in the fact that it clearly refers to one’s self-image as regard to belonging to a specific sex. Thus, of a patient who says: ‘I am not a very masculine man’, it is possible to say that his gender identity is male although he recognizes his lack of so-called masculinity. – International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 1964, v 45, pages 220 – 226
Jorgensen echos Dr. Stoller’s concern over the use of “sex” in terms associated with her experience saying in 1985, “I am a transgender because gender refers to who you are as a human.” In 1982, a news article has this to say:
Ms. Jorgensen, now 56, said in a speech to Fresno State University students Monday that she describes people who have had such operations’ “transgender” rather than transsexual. “Sexuality is who you sleep with, but gender is who you are,” she explained.
For most, gender and sex seems to have existed in a non-duilistic and holistic state so that gender did not exist within a mind which was somehow separate from the body.
Transgender - By 1970, the term “transgendered” showed up in the TV Guide referencing a supposed transsexual movie character43. By the early 1970s, the term showed up in books referencing transsexuals44 and was used as an umbrella term inclusive of all types of non-cisgender experience and expression in print and at a 1974 trans conference45. By the mid-1970s, the term began showing up in pop culture (eg, referencing the rock star Alice Cooper46, used as an adjective47, etc). By the mid-1970s, regional trans leaders were rejecting “transsexual” by using variations of “transgender.”48 By the close of the 1970s, Jorgensen publicly disavowed “transsexual” in favor of “transgender.”49 Throughout the 1980s, the term is used to refer to transsexuals.50 However, by 1983, I found that the term “transgenderism” seems to have been shortened to “transgender”51 even though that same year the transsexual classic, The Uninvited Dilemma explicitly supports the use of transgender over transsexual52. By 1984, the term is again being used as an umbrella term which was inclusive of both transsexuals and crossdressers.53 By the mid and late-1980s, the term became interchangeable in common usage so that a transsexual and/or crossdresser might be transgender.54 This continued as a strictly grassroots trend until trans events, organizations and publications began to embrace “transgender” in the late 1980s and early1990s. When In Search of Eve was published in 1987, the book used “transgender” to describe the transsexual experience55. In 1986, the Transgender Archives was founded and “transgender” was used as an umbrella term56. When the first international trans event took place in the early 1990s, the event used “transgender” in its name as an umbrella term and event literature provided a clear definition of what the term meant and made it clear that transgender and transgenderist were not the same thing.
Currently, the creator of this term is unknown.
Transgenderist – While Ariadne Kane’s and Phyllis Frye’s usage of this term was years before Prince’s usage, credit is still given to Prince for coining the term in 1978. Phyllis Frye was using the term in 1975 and seems to credit a magazine published by the national director of the United Transvestite and Transexual Society for introducing her to the term. It should be noted that when Prince was 81 years old, she said that she the thought she might have said the term “transgenderist” at a conference in 1974 or 7557; however, around that same time, she also told Leslie Feinberg that she coined the term “transgenderist” in the late 1980s58. In all of Prince’s copious writings – right up until 1978 – Prince did not use the term “transgenderist” once; not even when she attempted to explicitly classify the various types of trans people in 197759. What we do known is that the earliest usage of “transgenderist” found in print is in 1975.
A June 2, 1979 article of the Radio Times states “It is estimated that about one person in 2,000 is a transgenderist – someone who feels an overwhelming need either to dress in the clothes of the opposite gender, or . . . to ‘change sex’ completely.” Days later on June 6th, Claire Raynor, on the BBC 4 radio show Crossing Over explained the term this way: “Transgenderists – the rather clumsy label that has been devised to cover both transvestites and transsexuals.”60 The 1979 on-air usage was used in the same way “transgender” had been used in 1974: as an umbrella term.
The term saw a steady increased usage throughout the 1980s, but saw an enormous spike in usage between 1991 and 199661.
Currently, the creator of this term is unknown.
Transgenderal – Thus far, Prince’s use of this term is the earliest yet discovered in print. If she did indeed coin this term, she seems to have repourpused Benjamin’s popularized term (transsexual) and in 1969 and wrote “transgenderal” (trans+genderal – ”genderal” was a term Prince commonly used62) once in her 1969 booklet63. She never used the terms again64. After the 1969 usage, I’ve not yet found the term used again in print until 1980 where it’s used as a synonym for the German word, übergeschlechtliche65.
Transgenderism – Prince claims to have coined “transgenderism” to specifically refer to the “transgenderist” experience in 1978. However, Phyllis Frye was differentiating between “transgenderism” and “transvestism” in 1975 and Ariadne Kane was using the term in 1976. As noted above, the term seems to have become conflated with “transgender” by 198366. By the early to mid 1980s, the term was closely associated with transgenderists, however, by 1986 the term was in use only half as much as it was in 1980. Usage increased as by 1990 and became synonymous with the modern usage of transgender.67
Currently, the creator of this term is unknown.
“Trans People” – Phyllis Frye began to use “trans-person” as an umbrella term before Virginia Prince, though Prince is given credit for coining the term in the late 1970s.
Currently, the creator of this term is unknown.
“Gender Dysphoria” – Dr. Norman Fisk popularized this concept in 197468. As “Gender Dysphoria” began to enter into the pop consciousness of the world via books, speeches and newsprint, it became synonymous with “transsexual.” However, the term was actually meant as an umbrella term for all who were dealing with gender issues:
“The concept of gender dysphoria syndrome grew out of clinical necessity very much in an organic, naturalistic fashion… I readily agree that classical transsexualism as best described by Dr. Benjamin represents the most extreme form of gender dysphoria… [After undergoing treatment through Fisk's Gender Clinic] There exists additional evidence to further validate the point that for all groups (except for the gender dysphoria syndrome sub-diagnosis transvestitism) there was statistically significant improvement in social adjustment, psychologic adjustment, economic achievement and, for all groups, including transvestites, a highly significant improvement in sexual adjustment.” – Norman M. Fisk, 1974
Prince claimed that this umbrella usage was incorrect since, in her view, gender only amounted to a cultural sex costume and therefore could not be applied to the transsexual experience69. By the end of the 1970s, the body that’s responsible for setting the standards of care for the medical and psychological treatment of transsexualism named itself the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association.
Karl Heinrich Ulrichs spoke of a “feminine soul enclosed in a male body” (Die Geschlechtsnatur des mannliebenden Urnings, eine naturwissenschaftliche Darstellung: körperlich-seelischer Hermaphroditismus. Anima Muliebris Virili corpore Inclusa) in 1868. Ulrich spoke of a mental (seelischer) intersex condition (Hermaphroditismus) as being part of one’s essential personhood (anima). However, this and later use of the “wrong body narrative” was generally used to describe a stereotypical female sexual drive within the body of a male.70 Magnus Hirschfeld echos Ulrich’s “körperlich-seelischer Hermaphroditismus. Anima Muliebris Virili corpore Inclusa“ with his 1923 term, “seelischer transsexualismus.” It isn’t until Jorgensen popularized the experience of having one’s essential personhood trapped in an oppositely sexed body that gender was popularized as being the subjective experience of one’s sex within the context of a culture.71 “I was a woman masquerading in a seemingly male body,” said Jorgensen to her early endocrinologist, Dr. Christian Hamburger. Only after Jorgensen popularized this dysphoric experience of gender as a reaction to one’s physical sex that Dr. Stoller writes of “gender identity” in a way that recognized Jorgensen’s subjective experience. The notion of an identity based upon the subjective experience of one’s sex as understood by one’s essential personhood instead of an identity based upon the experience of possessing a sex within a culture “irked” Prince in the same way it tends to irk modern critics of gender identity such as J. Michael Bailey and Ray Blanchard.
Umbrella Semantics: Umbrella terms that were used to describe the non-cisgender experience have existed for more than a century.
Transgesticismus – This 1920 term was originally an Karl Ulrichs term (transgestismus), but was modified by Hirshfield to refer to people who behaved in a cross-sexed manner.72
Hermaphroditismus (hermaphrodite) – Under Hirshfield’s intersex types, all trans people were classified as being some type of intersex person.73 This classification persisted well into the late 1950; on her 1958 LP, Jorgensen – while making it clear that she was not a true “hermaphrodite” – nevertheless discussed her experiences as an expression of sex that was caught between two bianary states of sex.
Zwischenstufen and Geschlechtsüebergäenge - According to the 1914 Lexicon of Sexology, these two terms were used to describe anyone who was not stereotypically male or female.74
Transvestitismus (transvestite) - Originally coined in 1652, to reference crossdressing women75, Hirshfield viewed this as a catch-all term for anyone with a “mixture of mental gender differences” (Mischung seelischer Geschlechtsunterschiede, 1918:89). In a 1931 report recounting the genital reconstruction surgeries by Berlin doctor Ludwig Levy-Lenz, the transsexuals in the report were referred to as transvestites. Transvestite was used as the umbrella term of its day and basically meant what transgender means today.
Transsexual – When Benjamin popularized this term, he meant it as a taxonomy for all part/full-time cross-sex living people whether or not they took hormones and/or undertook any surgical intervention.
Trans – By the mid-1970s, this term was used as an umbrella term to describe all crossdressers and/or transsexuals.
Transgender – First used as an umbrella term in print and during a trans conference in1974, a decade later the term was being commonly used as an umbrella term.
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Meme Transmission
The diffusion of memes into a culture oftentimes occurs due to the copying of an observed behavior of another individual, but memes may transmit from one individual to another through a copy recorded in an inanimate source, such as a books, newspapers, recordings, movies, etc..
Culture of Collaboration – During the 1970s, numerous collaborative efforts (both on a national and local scale) were undertaken by various types of trans people who chose to group themselves together and work in support each other76. Transsexuals openly supported transvestites77 and transvestites openly supported transsexuals78. Letters from transsexuals were published in “TV/TS” publications urging for more collaboration79. National organizations were organized to be explicitly inclusive of all80. By the 1970s, trans leaders began using explicitly inclusive terms like “trans person” in their advocacy work81. By the 1980s, trans communication avenues (eg. magazines82, early internet83 and groups84) were actively engaged in the diffusion of norms which held that all trans people were part of one community. By 1992, the International Transgender Law Conference (ICLEPT) was held:
Transgendered persons include transsexuals, transgenderists, and other crossdressers of both sexes, transitioning in either direction (male to female or female to male), of any sexual orientation, and of all races, creeds, religions, ages and degrees of physical impediment. - Pamphlet for the 1992 ICLEPT
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Conclusions
The evidence is that “transgender” existed years before “transgenderist” did and there exists no evidence to support the idea that Prince’s one obscure use (and then immediate abandonment) of “transgenderal” is where all trans terms come from. No evidence exists to support the notion that Prince coined “transgenderist,” “transgenderism,” “trans,” “trans people” or “transgender.” The evidence shows that throughout the early use of “transgender,” the term is used to exclusively reference the transsexual experience with the exception of two 1974 usages when it was used as an umbrella term. No usage of ”transgender” from the early 70s has yet been found which refers to crossdressers alone. I think it’s clear that the use of “gender” to describe the transsexual’s dilemma is largely responsible for the early 1970s use of “transgender” when referring to transsexual issues. With the exception of “transgenderal,” I think that it’s most appropriate to cease claiming that we know who coined any of the trans terms I’ve reviewed in this article.
Both Prince and Jorgensen were TS separatists in their own right; neither of them chose to identify with the term (transsexual) Benjamin had used to describe their experience. Both Prince and Jorgensen were transsexuals under the Benjamin standard and both of them rejected that identity soon after it was popularized. Around 1970, both Prince and Jorgensen were playing with new terminology to describe their experience. By the late 1970s, both were using and promoting terms neither of them had created to describe their experience. Jorgensen began using “transgender” – a term which had been around for years and seems to have meant Type 5 or 6 transsexual on the Benjamin scale. Prince began using “transgenderist” – another term which had been around for years and seems to have meant Type 4 or 5 transsexual on the Benjamin scale. When the evidence is objectively reviewed, the story it tells is that different types of Benjamin Scale Transsexuals were searching for, finding and then promoting terms they felt better represented their experience.
It should be noted that the rejection of Benjamin’s terminology occurred within the context of a trans community that clearly valued unity while rejecting uniformity. It’s clear that the various parts of the trans population regularly worked together. The trans community had been using “trans” as a simple umbrella term since the mid 1970s. Whether it called itself the “gender community,” the “TV/TS community,” the “paraculture” or the “transgender community” the intent has always been the same: the recognition of the various types of trans groups who share some common issues and who could work together in common cause. Examples of efforts to cultivate unity (not uniformity) abound throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s from practically all aspects of the trans community.
L - R: Merissa Sherrill Lynn, Sheila Kirk, Christine Jorgensen (keynote speaker), Richard Docter, Ariadne Kane and Bette Ann Lind at the IFGE "Come Together" 1988 Conference
While I can find two 1974 umbrella usages of “transgender” and two British umbrella usages of “transgenderist” in 1979, the delineation between the two terms tended to be clear throughout most of the 1970s and very early 1980s until the non-trans community began to use the term more frequently as an adjective outside of the context of the trans community. Throughout the 1980s, popular transsexual books continued to use “transgender” in the same way Jorgensen promoted it. At the same time (throughout the 1980s) there are numerous examples in which non-trans writers use “transgender” as an adjective when discussing non-trans topics. By 1983, I seem to have found “transgenderism” shortened to transgender in a trans community magazine; however this was by no means a total lexiconic shift so that transgender only ever meant transgenderist in some absolute sense from that moment forward. It is from this time within trans linguistic history is, I believe, where some got the mistaken impression that transgender came from transgenderist.
Most of what has to be done has to be done by the transgendered person with help from others in the transgender community. First, such a person has to stop looking for a scapegoat – whether that scapegoat is a biological structure or a societal structure. If her/his biology really causes the ‘problem’, short of reassignment surgery, there is not much that can be done. If society is the issue, then choices are few and most will opt to stay in the society they know, even if it rejects them. As a result, one has to ‘pick themselves up by their bootstraps’ and see themselves as worthy, responsible and lovable human beings. This can not be accomplished alone and that is where the community comes in. - TV/TS Tapestry, 1984
With transgender showing up as an adjective, a noun meaning transsexual and a shorted form of transgenderism, I don’t find it surprising that by 1984 I find a trans publication discussing the importance of a “transgender community” wherein “transgender” is used in it’s modern context. Within a few years, “transgender” had – through grassroots usage – become a semantic umbrella designation and an adjective.
This grassroots usage continued throughout the 1980s even though “transgenderist” was clearly still in wide use. By the late 80s and early 90s, it is clear that the users of the term understood that a transgenderist is just one of the many types of trans folk who were transgender.
The continuous use of “transgender” to refer to the transsexual experience from 1970 through 2012 does not support the notion that transsexuals didn’t use the term until the mid 1990s. The obscurity and immediate abandonment of transgenderal does not support the notion that all transgender terms were given birth from this term. Additionally, I am not confidant, given the numerous other erroneous attributions of authorship given to Prince, that earlier non-Prince usages of “transgenderal” won’t be discovered. The fact that transgender, trans, transpeople, transgenderist and transgenderism were all in use prior to Prince’s use does not support the notion that Prince invented these terms. The fact that transgender was in use prior to transgenderist and transgenderism and was used in reference to transsexuals or as an umbrella term does not support the notion that transgender came from transgenderist or transgenderism. The fact that we currently do not know who invented transgender, trans, transpeople, transgenderist or transgenderism does not support the practice of assigning authorship to anyone; the correct thing for researchers to do is to honestly state that we do not currently know who coined these terms. The grassroots drive toward a unified (but not uniform) community is easily tracked from 1970 to 2012 and does not support the notion that no community existed prior to the mid-1990s or that this community somehow popped into existence due to the mid-1990s edicts of a handful of trans leadership.
In short, there’s no evidence to support the memes I discussed at the beginning of this article. Ironically, one need only look to those who push these memes to discover who is actually acting to strip the transsexual community of its history and language. The term “transgender” has been a part of transsexual culture, history and identity for almost as long as the term “transsexual” has. Practically as soon as as the term “transsexual” entered the pop lexicon in the mid-1960s, within just a few years we have the transsexual experience being referred to as “transgendered” and then we have the world’s leading transsexual opinion leader publicly rejecting “transsexual” in favor of other terms: transsex (1971) and transgender (1979).
Those who would shut the door on this transsexual history are asking us to live in a fictitious victim world that pits transsexuals against other trans folk in a battle for identity. I, as a post-op transsexual woman, am proud of the transsexual community’s actual history. I’m glad that I’m not a victim of some global conspiracy of colonization70. I’m glad that my community has a long, long history of working hand and hand with other types of trans populations as equal stakeholders in a shared experience. It is a fact that this transsexual-initiated71 approach to progress has continued to pay off. Trans protections are proliferating and the zeitgeist has become less and less tolerant of anti-trans sentiment.
I, like Christine Jorgensen, am a transgender women.
NOTES
This is a personal blog version of the rather dry review of the data that will be posted to my trans research blog (research.cristanwilliams.com) in April. This personal blog post version is, in some ways, a sandbox for my more formal April version. Please feel free to respond to this post with your insights and/or typos you’ve caught. Also, the citation formats will be cleaned up for the April version… again, this is my personal blog sandbox version
1.) “The coiner of the term transgender was Virginia Prince, a heterosexual crossdresser who held those of us who had sex reassignment surgery in contempt. Virginia was particularly vicious in her opinion regarding WBTs who were lesbian after sex reassignment surgery. She called us freaks and mistakes.” - Cooke, S. (2007). Good-Bye to Transgender and All That. Retrieved March 25, 2012 from http://www.ts-si.org/guest-columns/2347-good-bye-to-transgender-and-all-that
2.) “As many people are aware, Virginia Prince, a male crossdresser and a staunch promoter of heterosexual transvestism since the late 1950s, invented the term “transgender” in the 1990s to distinguish male crossdressers from men and women born with HBS. ” - Thompson, L. (2007). Sex, Gender, and Bathrooms: A Discussion of Transgender (Part 1). Retrieved March 25, 2012 from http://ts-si.org/global-warning/2832-sex-gender-and-bathrooms-a-discussion-of-transgender-part-1
3.) ”After that conversation, somebody posted this to our online forum: As a transsexual-identified woman, I find the use of the words transgender, transgenderism, gender nonconforming and gender variance highly offensive when applied to me. These are LGBT community buzzwords that should only be applied to their community – not to transsexuals that live outside of it, or that aren’t trying to break gender norms. The LGBT community efforts to push this word to include all transsexuals is shameful. She blogs under the name Transsexual People Aren’t Transgendered.” - Martin, M. & Hill, L. (2011). Listener: Don’t Call Me Transgender. Retrieved March 25, 2012 from http://www.npr.org/2011/04/01/135042281/listener-dont-call-me-transgender#
4.) “… Virginia Prince, a male crossdresser… Calling himself “transgender” rather than a “crossdresser” or a “transvestite” was an attempt to remove himself and other similar “transgenders” from the negative cultural baggage and the concurrent approbation that is linked to male crossdressing.” - Thompson, L. (2007). Sex, Gender, and Bathrooms: A Discussion of Transgender (Part 1). Retrieved March 25, 2012 from http://ts-si.org/global-warning/2832-sex-gender-and-bathrooms-a-discussion-of-transgender-part-1
5.) “Feinberg, a Marxist… [asserted that] True transgender liberation requires the overthrow of capitalism, just as any truly revolutionary social change must address the question of transgender liberation. In simple non-dialectic terms, Feinberg believes that capitalism and transgenderism are mutually exclusive. You must be a socialist, or a communist, or maybe even an anarchist if you are truly transgendered.” - Thompson, L. (2007). Sex, Gender, and Bathrooms: A Discussion of Transgender (Part 1). Retrieved March 25, 2012 from http://ts-si.org/global-warning/2832-sex-gender-and-bathrooms-a-discussion-of-transgender-part-1
6.) “In Australian human rights circles already there is a new term to replace Transgender as the community/issues umbrella term so as to be more inclusive of diversity and be more accurate. The new term is S&GD or Sex and Gender Diversity… That way it can include Intersex people, Transsexuals of strong binary-gender identity who feel that transgender does not describe them as their gender is quite fixed not ‘trans’ at all as well as less binary transsexuals, bi-gender, genderqueer, crossdressers etc. So we may all band together for the sake of each others human rights while also recognising we are not all the same but varied and diverse. This can also be extended to SS&GD Sexuality Sex and Gender Diversity. Which is much more rational and fair and inclusive and less cumbersome than GLBTTIQQ etc. ” - Forum Discussion (05/23/2010, 12:48 PM). Time to revise our Terminology. and more. Retrieved March 25, 2012 from http://crossdresserclub.com/home/archive/index.php/t-12730.html
7.) “At one point, she got a chance to meet Christine and her mother as she was performing in L.A. Jorgensen was a curiosity, but Virginia had no impression of her otherwise.” - (2009). Interview with Prince, Association for Transsexual Support Newsletter, V Foster
8.)“[SRS] does not change you into a woman. Your inborn (genetic) sex will remain male. If the surgeion castrates you as part of the operation, you would be, technically and from a glandular point of view, neither male nor female. You would be a ‘neuter.’” - Benjamin, H. (1963:293). Sexology. New York: Sexology. [LINK]
9.)“Even as transgender narratives multiply, Jorgensen’s story still compels.” - Creating Christine. (2001, March 27). The Advocate, p.66.
“Christine will be missed by many of us and remembered by us all for many reasons. One is a stance she once took on civil rights: “If a law can be created in Dade County Florida against homosexuals, then where will it stop?… You’re opening up the floodgate to discrimination against everybody.” Now that everyone has been caught off guard by new legislation that legalizes housing discrimination against the transgendered, Christine’s statement looks prophetic. Mostly, though, she’ll be remembered as a personality… Our celebrity. National TV and TS organizations accorded her superstar rank, with the status and prestige that went with it. She was constantly in demand at one lavish awards banquet after another, and surrounded by fans and autograph seekers.” - (1989). TV-TS Tapestry, pp.71, Issue 54. [Link]
10.)“On December 1, 1952, the Daily News ran a story headlined “EX-GI BECOMES BLONDE BOMBSHELL,” turning Christine Jorgensen (1927-1989) into an instant celebrity and the most famous transsexual figure of the 20th Century.” – The Kinsey Institute website [link]
11, 12.)Using Google archive search, it took until 1973 to find Jorgensen referred to as a transsexual in newsprint when reviewing Google’s top archived news hits for “Christine Jorgensen.” (searching between the years 1951 and 1973) The Houston Transgender Archive is in possession of a 1966 newsprint article which refers to Jorgensen as a transsexual. – research.cristanwilliams.com, [Link]
13.) “If you understand trans-genders,” she says, (the word she prefers to transsexuals), “then you understand that gender doesn’t have to do with bed partners, it has to do with identity.” – (1979). Newsday article reprinted in the Winnipeg Free Press, [link]
“Ms. Jorgensen, now 56, said in a speech to Fresno State University students Monday that she describes people who have had such operations’ “transgender” rather than transsexual. “Sexuality is who you sleep with, but gender is who you are,” she explained.” – (1982). Associated Press Article, [link]
“The word transsexual irks Jorgensen because the word sex, she believes, is only relivant to what one does in bed. I am a transgender because gender refers to who you are as a human.” - Williams, C. (2011). Christine Jorgensen: Transgender Woman. Retrieved March 25, 2012 from http://research.cristanwilliams.com/2011/08/21/christine-jorgensen-transgender-woman/
14.) ”Harry Benjamin, who in 1953 became Christine Jorgensen’s endocrinologist in the united States…” – (2010:219). Please Select Your Gender: From the Invention of Hysteria to the Democratization of Transgenderism, P. Gherovici
“In the early 1950s Benjamin wrote to Doris: “The papers here are full of the Jorgensen case, the boy who went to Denmark to be operated on and is now coming back as a girl. I’ll probably see the party when she gets home” (personal communication, Dec. 3, 1952). Immediately, mutual friends arranged for Christine and Benjamin to meet, and months later in April 1953, the 27-year-old “GI turned Blonde Beauty” (Jorgensen, 1967, pp. 110-111; New York Daily News, December 1952) became Benjamin’s seventh patient with gender dysphoria. Although Harry never made the original diagnosis of her transsexualism, his meeting with “the Jorgensen girl” was the onset of a relationship that lasted the rest of his life. Benjamin monitored Christine’s hormones and discussed with her the multiple problems facing transsexual people.” – (1987). Harry Benjamin’s first ten cases (1938-1953): A Clinical Historical Note, LC Schaefer & CC Wheeler
15.) (1957:80-85). Homosexuality, Transvestism and Transsexualism, AJ of Psychotherapy, v11.
16.) “In 1961, shortly after founding Transvestia, Prince got together some of its subscribers who began to meet in the Los Angeles area. Known initially as the Hose and Heels club, in 1962 this began to evolve into a national organisation called the Foundation for Full Personality Expression (FPE or Phi Pi Epsilon) with a magazine for members called Femme Mirror (Prince, 1997b: 352).” – (2005).Virginia Prince: Transgender Pioneer, R Ekins & D King
17.) “Prince also began in the 1950s, as we have seen, to enter into a dialogue with leading members of the medical profession in this area, such as Benjamin.” - (2005:5-15). Virginia Prince: Pioneer of Transgendering (ed: Richard Ekins. and Dave King) The Haworth Medical Press, an imprint of The Haworth Press, Inc.
“How Prince met Benjamin is unclear but Benjamin had a summer practice in San Fran-cisco (Person, 1999: 359) and in The Transvestite and His Wife (Prince 1967: 6) Prince ac¬knowledges the help Benjamin was to her “personally in my parental and marital problems,” so presumably their first encounters were of a professional nature.” – (2005).Virginia Prince: Transgender Pioneer, R Ekins & D King
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