Categories like transvestite, transsexual, transgender, and trans itself are good to rethink US history, but this book will demonstrate that it is the slippages and overlaps between these types that can be the most informative. As most dictionaries will explain, trans means across, beyond, over, and between; it can also denote change, transformation.90 The history that follows will include those with transgender bodies before transgender emerged as a descriptor; those who cannot be categorized as either transvestite or transsexual; cross-dressers who modify their bodies but who are not transsexual; those who wanted to be homosexual rather than heterosexual after their bodily reconstruction; and those who consider themselves beyond classification. This book will locate and contest some of the more significant structural and conceptual weaknesses in trans history: the neglect of an important period of critique in transsexuality’s early years; a claimed recognition of systems of technology and therapy and notions of sexual identity that I will suggest were far more tentative, contested, and fragmentary; and a neglect of other forms of trans expression both before and after the transsexual moment of the 1960s and 1970s. This book will attempt a new history of transsexuality and transgender in modern America.
Notes
1 1. M. L. Brown and C. A. Rounsley, True Selves: Understanding Transsexualism – For Families, Friends, Coworkers, and Helping Professionals (San Francisco, 1996), p. 25; J. F. Boylan, She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders (New York, 2003), p. 174.
2 2. R. Erickson, ‘Foreword’, in R. Green and J. Money (eds.), Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment (Baltimore, 1969), p. xi.
3 3. M. W. Valerio, The Testosterone Files: My Hormonal and Social Transformation from Female to Male (Berkeley, 2006), p. 2.
4 4. E. B. Towle and L. M. Morgan, ‘Romancing the Transgender Native: Rethinking the Use of the “Third Gender” Concept’, GLQ, 8:4 (2002), 469–97. True Selves comes in for specific criticism in this regard (at 478).
5 5. C. Millot, Horsexe: Essays on Transsexuality, translated by K. Hylton (New York, 1990), p. 141. First published in French in 1983. Robert Stoller termed transsexualism ‘a newly described condition (the literature begins only in 1953)’: R. J. Stoller, The Transsexual Experiment (London, 1975), p. 2.
6 6. J. Meyerowitz, How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States (Cambridge, Mass., 2002), p. 1. See chs. 1 and 2.
7 7. H. Benjamin, The Transsexual Phenomenon (New York, 1966); Green and Money (eds.), Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment; Stoller, Transsexual Experiment. The term was really first used in print by the popular sexologist D. O. Cauldwell in 1949, as will be discussed in chapter 2.
8 8. The best history of transsexuality is Meyerowitz, How Sex Changed.
9 9. Ibid., pp. 217–22.
10 10. For an excellent short history of US transgender, see G. Beemyn, ‘US History’, in L. Erickson-Schroth (ed.), Trans Bodies, Trans Selves: A Resource for the Transgender Community (New York, 2014), ch. 22. The essay was published separately in a longer version as an Ebook: G. Beemyn, Transgender History in the United States (New York, 2014).
11 11. See, for example, R. Ekins and D. King, The Transgender Phenomenon (London, 2006); S. Stryker, P. Currah, and L. J. Moore, ‘Introduction: Trans-, Trans, or Transgender?’ Women’s Studies Quarterly, 36:3–4 (2008), 11–22; S. Stryker, Transgender History (Berkeley, 2008, 2017).
12 12. A. Bolin, In Search of Eve: Transsexual Rites of Passage (New York, 1988), p. 84.
13 13. W. O. Bockting, ‘Psychotherapy and the Real-Life Experience: From Gender Dichotomy to Gender Diversity’, Sexologies, 17:4 (2008), 211–24, quote at 214.
14 14. H. L. Talley, ‘Facial Feminization and the Theory of Facial Sex Difference: The Medical Transformation of Elective Intervention to Necessary Repair’, in J. A. Fisher (ed.), Gender and the Science of Difference: Cultural Politics of Contemporary Science and Medicine (New Brunswick, NJ, 2011), ch. 10; E. Plemons, The Look of a Woman: Facial Feminization Surgery and the Aims of Trans-Medicine (Durham, NC, 2017), quote at p. 1.
15 15. D. Denny, ‘Interview with Anne Bolin, Ph.D.’, Chrysalis Quarterly, 1:6 (1993), 15–20; A. Bolin, ‘Transcending and Transgendering: Male-to-Female Transsexuals, Dichotomy and Diversity’, in G. Herdt (ed.), Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture and History (New York, 1996), ch. 10.
16 16. G. Beemyn and S. Rankin, The Lives of Transgender People (New York, 2011), pp. 23–6.
17 17. J. W. Wright, Trans/Portraits: Voices from Transgender Communities (Hanover, NH, 2015).
18 18. Ibid., pp. 72–3.
19 19. L. M. Diamond, S. T. Pardo, and M. R. Butterworth, ‘Transgender Experience and Identity’, in S. J. Schwartz and others (eds.), Handbook of Identity Theory and Research (New York, 2011), ch. 26, quote at p. 630.
20 20. The title of the journal’s double inaugural issue, ‘Postposttranssexual: Key Concepts for a Twenty-First-Century Transgender Studies’, TSQ, 1:1–2 (2014).
21 21. For trans*, see S. Stryker and P. Currah, ‘Introduction’, TSQ, 1:1–2 (2014), 1–18, quote at 3. See also A. Tompkins, ‘Asterisk’, TSQ, 1:1–2 (2014), 26–7.
22 22. Tompkins, ‘Asterisk’, 27.
23 23. A. Z. Aizura, Mobile Subjects: Transnational Imaginaries of Gender Reassignment (Durham, NC, 2018), pp. 11–12.
24 24. M. Rajunov and S. Duane (eds.), Nonbinary: Memoirs of Gender and Identity (New York, 2019).
25 25. CN Lester, Trans Like Me: A Journey for All of Us (London, 2017), Ebook, loc. 521.
26 26. The editors, ‘Future Gender’, Aperture, 229 (2017), 23.
27 27. E. J. Green, Young New York (New York, 2019).
28 28. J. Rose, ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ London Review of Books, 5 May 2016.
29 29. For Transparent, see S. Stryker and others, ‘Virtual Roundtable on Transparent’, Public Books, 1 August 2015: www.publicbooks.org/artmedia/virtual-roundtable-on-transparent.
30 30. For television and trans children, see A. Prochuk, ‘From the Monster to the Kid Next Door: Transgender Children, Cisgender Parents, and the Management of Difference on TV’, Atlantis, 36:2 (2014), 36–48, quote at 37.
31 31. For example, J. A. Peters, Luna a Novel (New York, 2004); M. Ewert, 10,000 Dresses (New York, 2008); B. Katcher, Almost Perfect (New York, 2009); J. Carr, Be Who You ARE! (Bloomington, Ind., 2010); C. Beam, I Am J (New York, 2011); C. Kilovadis, My Princess Boy (New York, 2011); K. Cronn-Mills, Beautiful Music for Ugly Children (Woodbury, Minn., 2012); K. E. Clark, Freak Boy (New York, 2013); A. Fabrikant, When Kayla Was Kyle (Lakewood, Calif., 2013); A. Gino, George (New York, 2015); D. Gephart, Lily and Dunkin (New York, 2016); M. Russo, If I Was Your Girl (New York, 2016). I am grateful to Claire Gooder for compiling this list.
32 32. For Jenner, see the two-season reality series, I Am Cait (2015, 2016); Vanity Fair: Trans America, Special Edition, 18 August 2015; and C. Jenner and B. Bissinger, The Secrets of My Life (London, 2017). For Mock, see J. Mock, Redefining Realness (New York, 2014); J. Mock, Surpassing Certainty (New York, 2017); and her blog https://janetmock.com.
33 33. M. Lovelock, ‘Call Me Caitlyn: Making and Making Over the “Authentic” Transgender Body in Anglo-American Popular Culture’, Journal of Gender Studies, 26:6 (2017), 675–87.
34 34. L. Horak, ‘Trans on YouTube: Intimacy, Visibility, Temporality’, TSQ, 1:4 (2014), 572–85; T. Raun, ‘Archiving the Wonders of Testosterone Via YouTube’, TSQ, 2:4 (2015), 701–9, quote at 701; T. Raun, Out Online: Trans Self-Representation and Community Building on YouTube (London, 2016). See, too, M. Heinz, Entering Masculinity: