From Lili Elbe to Laverne Cox: A Brief History of Trans People

For as long as there has been gender there have been those who have stepped outside it, there have been those who have bent and questioned it, and those who are what we now call ‘trans’, people who born as the wrong sex. Almost every culture and country in the world has their own version of trans people. In India they were called Hijra, in Polynesia they were the Fa'afafine, in Thailand they are ladyboys and tomboys, in New Zealand they were the Takatāpui.

Our Western contemporary understanding of trans people harks back to the early twentieth century, with the advent of sexology, then a new field in modern medicine. In 1885, the Criminal Law Act was passed in the UK, making all homosexual behaviour illegal. Trans people were often lumped in with homosexual people, they were called crossdressers and arrested for transvestism. This persecution coincided with leaps in surgical technology, and many trans people sought the help of doctors and medical professionals to correct their gender and escape discrimination.

The first sex change operations were done by Dr Felix Abraham. He performed a mastectomy on a trans man in 1926, a penectomy on his domestic servant Dora in 1930, and a vaginoplasty on Lili Elbe, a Danish painter, in 1931. Lili Elbe (subject of the recent film The Danish Girl) unfortunately died two years later due to complications from the surgery.

"Medical professionals now realised that trans people were not one-of-kind cases, but were far more common than they had ever thought."

But it wasn’t until Christine Jorgensen entered the picture that the full scope of trans people could be seen. Jorgensen, a former American GI, returned from Denmark as a woman and became almost instantly famous.

As one of obituaries put it: "Her very public life after her 1952 transition and surgery was a model for other transsexuals for decades. She was a tireless lecturer on the subject of transsexuality, pleading for understanding from a public that all too often wanted to see transsexuals as freaks or perverts ... Ms Jorgensen's poise, charm, and wit won the hearts of millions."

Jorgensen’s psychiatrist in Denmark, Dr Hamburger, was suddenly swamped with letters from desperate trans people wishing to change their sex. In 1953, he was able to publish a paper based on the requests of 465 men and woman wanting to undergo gender reassignment. Medical professionals now realised that trans people were not one-of-kind cases, but were far more common than they had ever thought.

"Discovering your trans identity and deciding to embark on correcting your gender is a courageous battle fought on many fronts. Most of us don’t even realise how truly entrenched in our gender identity we already are."

In the early 1960s, endocrinologist Harry Benjamin set up a clinical practise in New York (and then San Francisco) to train a new breed of psychiatrists and psychotherapists to treat transsexual people. In 1966, he published the first major textbook on the issue, ‘The Transsexual Phenomenon’ and argued that hormone therapy and gender reassignment surgery was the only way to treat trans people.

Over the last half century, trans people and trans issues have become more visible. We had Jan Morris, the Times reporter who climbed Everest, Billy Tipton who was one of the greatest jazz saxophonists of the 1950s, Wendy Carlos who was one of the most influential electronic music artists in history, and more recently there has been Chaz Bono, Caitlyn Jenner, Amanda Lepore, and Laverne Cox.

Trans people today still face an uphill battle. Discovering your trans identity and deciding to embark on correcting your gender is a courageous battle fought on many fronts. Most of us don’t even realise how truly entrenched in our gender identity we already are. The Frontline documentary ‘Growing Up Trans’ examines the lives of several young trans people. Writing for Popmatters about the documentary, Desirae Embree notes “the reality of the amount of beauty labour that often goes into our gender presentations. Because people who identify with the gender they were assigned at birth are socialized into the norms for that gender in a manner that is essentially invisible, it's startling to see the concerted way in which transgender kids have to learn new ways of being in the world.”

One girl in the documentary, Ariel, was moved to a new town by her mother so she could begin her life as a girl, “Her friends candidly tell the camera that no one really thinks of Ariel as being transgender,” Embree writes, “and yet Ariel tearfully provides another perspective from which to view the supposed ideal of ‘passing’.” Ariel, sadly, will never be able to engage in conversations about pregnancy and childbirth, as other girls her age entering puberty will. The documentary also details the complications and risks these children undergo when affirming their gender identity. Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRS) often causes infertility and can increase a variety of other medical conditions.

Ariel, and trans people like her, continue to fight for their right to exist despite the social and medical barriers placed in front of them. Trans people have existed throughout history and they will continue to exist in our culture and society. All they want is to simply be who they are.

By Tim Gibson

Keep up to date with the latest myGnews

________

LGBT professionals, LGBT Graduates, LGBT professional network, LGBT professional events, LGBT networking events, LGBT Recruitment, LGBT Friendly organisations, LGBT Friendly companies, LGBT jobs

This article quotes these sources:

https://www.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/fln34trans-pd-livinginsecret/frontline-growing-up-trans-living-in-secret-as-a-girl/#.WzRdF2ZL3OQ

https://www.popmatters.com/growing-up-trans-2495489874.html

https://www.quora.com/What-was-it-like-growing-up-transgender

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/jun/02/brief-history-transgender-issues

https://www.ranker.com/list/list-of-famous-transgender-people/famous-gay-and-lesbian