Dr Graham – A Gender Therapist, specializing in Gender Dysphoria and its related issues.
Historic timeline (1497 BC – 1899)
Transsexualism is not a unique discovery of the last two hundred years. As seen in the following trans-historical timeline, in one situation or context it has been around for centuries. Occurrences of gender differences and variation of both females and males have been observed and documented since early times. Where it has been marginalized, persecuted, accepted, revered, ridiculed, classified as ‘deviant’, perverse and self-indulgent, throughout the ages and in every respect, still continues today.
4.500 years age
The Gala were Sumerian priests of the Sumerian Goddess Inanna, significant numbers of personnel of both temples and palaces, central institutions of Mesopotamian City States, were individuals with neither male nor female gender identities.
9000 to 3700 years ago.
In Ancient Greece, Phrygia, and Rome, there were trans-female ‘galli’ priests, and records of women who passed as men in order to vote, fight, or study during times when for women these things were forbidden.
479 to 458 BC
The 18th Dynasty pharaoh Hatshepsut ruled Egypt for two decades, which makes her the first known major female head of state – the first one we know about anyway. While women could be leaders in ancient Egypt, a pharaoh was by definition male. So Hatshepsut had to invent a hybrid gender, presenting a challenge to the sculptors charged with translating her flesh into stone
600s onwards.
In Africa, many societies have traditional roles for trans women and men, some of which survive in the modern era amid recent widespread hostility.
203 BC
Until the first century AD, Roman citizens were prohibited from becoming Galli. Under Claudius, however, this ban was lifted later
203 BC
The first Galli arrives in Rome Later the Senate officially adopt Cybele as a state goddess
222 BC
Roman Emperor Elagabalus, preferred to be called a lady not a lord, sought sex reassignment surgery, and has been seen as an early trans figure.
612 BC
Sappho (from the isle of Lesbos) carries on with her continuing influence on the notion and expression of lesbian desire.
1377
Bethlem was used for lunatics -Transgender history – Wikipedia
1394
Eleanor Rykener, a male-bodied Briton arrested while living and doing sex work as a woman, has been seen as a trans woman.
1400’s
In the Balkans female-assigned people have transitioned to live as men called sworn virgins.
1421
“The Chinese eunuch admiral Zheng Discovered America, Australia and navigates the rest of the World with a map which was later obtained by the Portuguese from the Chinese.
1533
English parliament passed the first civil injunction against sodomy, which was defined as any form of non-procreative sexual activity (buggery, bestiality, etc). The sexes of the partners were not defined. Sodomy remained a capital offense in England until 1861 the last execution for sodomy took place in 1836.
1577
King Henry III of France frequently cross-dressed and while dressed as a woman was referred to as ‘her majesty’ by his courtiers. Even his male clothes were considered outrageous despite the flamboyant standards of 6th-century France.
1600s.
Before Western contact, some Native American Tribes had third gender people whose social roles varied from tribe to tribe.
Some Native American Nations have long standing names and roles for gender-variant or third-gender people. These roles only tend to exist in cultures that have rigid gender roles, which is usually only seen in patriarchal communities. The term two-spirit, which is now retroactively used to describe these historical roles, was only created in 1990 at the Indigenous lesbian and Gay international gathering in Winnipeg, and “specifically chosen to distinguish and distance Native American/First Nations people from non-Native peoples.” The primary purpose of coining a new term was to encourage the replacement of the outdated and considered offensive, anthropological term, ‘Berdache’, which appears in anthropological accounts
1603 and 1868
Edo period In Japan, accounts of trans people go back to this time
1654
Queen Christina of Sweden (often considered to be bisexual) abdicated the throne, dressed in men’s clothing, and renamed her self Count Dohna.
1666
Robert Hooke was appointed city surveyor and designed the new (The Bethlehem Mental Hospital) in Moorfields.
1670
In England, the earliest records of private madhouses regularly recorded from this date
1673
French explorers Louis Joliet and Jacques Marquette come into contact with the “Berdache.” Illini Indians, and are astonished to discover a subset of Illini men who dressed and acted out the social role of women. The Illini termed these men “Ikoneta” while the French referred to them as the “Berdache.”
1676
MtF transsexual Abbe Francois Timoleon de Choisy attended a Papal inaugural Ball in female dress. His memoirs published postmortem, offer the first written testimony of cross-dressing.
1700
‘Molly’ houses provided a space for the English gay community to meet, carouse, and relate to one another. ‘Mollies’ were men who often cross- dressed and developed their own ‘queer’ culture.
1728
Chevalier D’Eon, born Charles d’Eon, was a famous French spy and ambassador who was born male but lived a significant part of his/her life as a woman. Chevalier’s birth sex was a hotly debated question
1750
Female to male transvestites join Nelson’s Navy as did hundreds of others and were only discovered when they were flogged. They were never usually punished for discovery. Many often went on stage and became celebrities wowing audiences backed by a singing and dancing groups of crossed dressed transvestite tarts. Mary Lacy known as William Chandler served on the ‘Sandwich’ as a carpenter is one of the most famous ‘she’ also wrote a biography others include William Brown who served on the ‘Queen Charlotte’ until being outed by a newspaper.
1774
The Madhouses Act was established, setting up a commission of the Royal College of Physicians to license and visit private madhouses in the London area. Although the commission could not release a patient improperly confined. This was the traditional role of the High Courts in Westminster, for whose benefit the registers were principally kept. The Westminster courts could also order special visits and reports, and examine those engaged in the execution of the Act.
1777
Beaumont (Eon of) Éon de Beaumont, Charles-Geneviève-Louis-Auguste-André-Timothée The most famous transvestite of the eighteenth century, a French diplomat Chevalier Éon de Beaumont lived the first half of his life as a man and the second as a woman. Charles de Beaumont, Knight of Eon. 1728 – 1810. As a secret French agent, went to Russia on a secret mission for Louis XV, he posed as a companion to Empress Elisabeth. He fought in the Seven Years war and was later secretary to the French ambassador to London. On his return to France (1777), Eon was ordered to dress permanently a woman, which he did until his death
1804
George Sands, born Amandine-Aurore-Lucile Dupin, became an accomplished French romantic writer as famous for her affairs as for her words. She was the first woman in modern European history to frequently wear men’s clothes, shocking her contemporaries.
1815
Alice Snell AKA James Gray served as a navy marine.
1829
Joseph Lobdell was born December 2, (as Lucy Ann Lobdell), to a working-class family living in Westlo, Albany County, New York. Lobdell married George Washington Slater, who was reportedly mentally abusive and abandoned Lobdell shortly after the birth of their daughter, Helen. Lobdell was known for marksmanship and nicknamed “The Female Hunter of Delaware County.” He wrote a memoir about his hunting adventures, his disastrous marriage and his feelings about God, ending with a plea for equal employment for women.
1832
Madhouses Act- established
1839 – 1844
‘Rebecca and her daughters’ a group of male-to-female cross-dressers, battled throughout the Welsh countryside destroying road toll barriers, which were making the poor even poorer. These warriors also adopted the names and identities of women”
1840
Asylum Care policy of the hungry-forties of the 19th century believed that by moving mentally unstable people, including transsexual from a community disturbed by poverty, depravity, and social unrest. To the closed, humane, but disciplined environment of a lunatic asylum, early in the development of their ‘insanity’, they could be cured and the accumulation of chronic lunatics on poor relief halted.
1841
In February ‘The London Statistical Society’ announced that it intended to collect lunatic asylum statistics during the year.
1842
The Licensed Lunatic Asylums Bill proposed a Barristers Commission as it was thought that county licensing and visiting was defective; it was proposed that the two legal commissioners should visit and report on county lunatic houses supplementary to the county visitors. The House of Commons rejected this proposal and an amended bill became the Inquiry Act
1843
Albert D. J. Cashier (December 25, 1843 – October 10, 1915), born Jennie Irene Hodgers, was an Irish born immigrant who served in the Union Army during the American Civil War Cashier adopted the identity of a man before enlisting, and maintained it until death. Cashier became famous as one of a number of women soldiers who served as men during the Civil War, His consistent and long-term commitment to a male identity has prompted some to suggest that Cashier was a trans man.
1845
The 1845 County Asylums Act compelled every county and borough in England and Wales to provide asylum treatment for all its pauper lunatics and Lord Ashley told Parliament that this would “affect a cure in seventy cases out of every hundred” (Hansard 6.6.1845 column 193).
1845
The Lunacy Act established the Lunacy Commission: the Act named eleven Metropolitan Commissioners as Lunacy Commissioners. Six (three medical and three legal) were to be employed full time at salaries of 1,500 pounds a year. The Lunacy Commission had national authority, under the Lord Chancellor and Home Secretary, overall asylums (except Bedlam until 1853). It shared responsibility with the Poor Law Commission/Board etc for pauper lunatics outside asylums. Its principal functions were to monitor the erection of a network of publicly-owned county asylums, required under the 1845 County Asylums Act, and the transfer of all pauper lunatics from workhouses and outdoor relief to a public or private asylum; to regulate their treatment in private asylums, and (with the Poor Law Commission) monitor the treatment of any remaining in workhouses or on outdoor relief. The Lunacy Commission was also to monitor the regulation of county asylums and county licensed houses by JP’s, and to regulate the conduct of hospitals for the insane. With the JP’s it monitored the admission and discharge of patients from all types of asylum. It collected collated and analysed data on the treatment of lunacy and advised on the development of lunacy law and policy. It also continued to license London’s madhouses.
1860
Sodomy was removed from the list of capital crimes, laws governing sexuality were being rethought in England.
1864
In response to panic over sexuality and its regulation, parliament passed the “CD Acts”—the Contagious Diseases Acts. It was further amended in 1866 and 1869 – The act was meant to shield the population from the vice of ‘prostitution’. In truth, the bill gave communities the right to regulate and police working-class women.
1866
Frances Thompson was a former slave, one of the five black women who testified before a congressional committee that investigated the Memphis Riots. Thompson and a housemate, Lucy Smith, were attacked by a mob of white terrorists and were among many freed women who were raped during those riots.
1876
Thompson was arrested for “being a man dressed in women’s clothing”. Cercle Hermaphroditos – Wikipedia
1895
The Cercle Hermaphroditus was a transgender advocacy organisation, founded in New York City “to unite for defence against the world’s bitter persecution”.
1896
During the Victorian period, cross-dressing is featured in various publications, and transvestites become affectionately known as ‘tight-lacers’.
1897
Henry Havelock Ellis of the Fabian Society becomes a supporter of sexual liberation. His interests in human biology and his personal experiences led Havelock Ellis to write his six-volume ‘Studies in the Psychology of Sex’. The books, published between 1897 and 1910 caused tremendous controversy and were banned for several years. Other books written by Havelock Ellis included ‘The New Spirit’ (1890), ‘Man and Woman’ (1894) ‘Sexual Inversion’ (1897), and The ‘Erotic Rights of Women’ (1918). Henry Havelock Ellis died in 1939. His autobiography, ‘My Life’ was published posthumously in 1940..
1897
“Magnus Hirschfeld starts the mostly homosexual Scientific Humanitarian Committee in Germany.
1897
Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld founded the first gay liberation organization in Germany: the Scientific Humanitarian Committee.
1899
In Psychiatrie: Ein Lehrbuch Fur Studerende und Aertze, 6th edition, Emil Kraeplin, a Munich professor of psychiatry classifies major psychoses into two groups: dementia praecox (paranoia) and manic-depressive psychosis.
1899
Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams revolutionizes psychiatric theory and practice. He is the first to use the unconscious to treat psychiatric illness in patients by using ‘psychoanalysis’ – free association and interpretation of dreams.
Historic timeline – (20th. Century significant Events)
1900’s
The Transgender Day of Remembrance was started and trans marches around the time of Pride became more common.
1900
Cross-dressing Carnival held in Crewe (Nr. Liverpool) in the North of England
1900
Sigmund Freud’s Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality describe the stages of sexual development and explains the effects of infantile sexuality on sexual dysfunction.
1907
Magnus Hirschfeld is introduced to Harry Benjamin.
1908
Clifford Beers publishes ‘A Mind That Found Itself’, detailing his experiences as a patient in psychiatric hospitals. This work prompts the founding of the mental hygiene movement in the United States.
1910
The term ‘transvestite’ coined by Magnus Hirschfeld
1910
Magnus Hirschfeld coins the terms ‘transvestite’ and ‘transsexual’.
1913
In the UK the 1913 Mental Deficiency Act established The Board of Control. This was the old Lunacy Commission with extended functions with respect to mental deficiency. The Board of Control continued to regulate the mental health system until 1959, but later with reduced responsibilities after the National Health Service Act defined Four “classes” of Mental Deficiency as follows:-
1. Idiot ~ unable to protect themselves from common dangers
2. Imbecile ~ could protect themselves from common dangers, but unable to take care of themselves
3. Feeble-minded ~ required care to protect themselves
4. Moral Defectives ~ criminal or vicious personalities. Unmarried Mothers, homosexuals and transgender people at the time became absorbed into this category.
The Board of Control was established which took on the powers and responsibilities of the Lunacy Commissioners.
1917
Alan L Hart (born October 4, 1890 – July 1, 1962) was an American physician, radiologist, tuberculosis researcher, writer and novelist. He was in 1917–18 one of the first trans men to undergo a Hysterectomy in the United States, and lived the rest of his life as a man. He pioneered the use of X-ray, Photography in tuberculosis detection, and helped implement TB screening programs that saved thousands of lives.
1917
The Austrian psychiatrist Julius von Wagner-Jauregg becomes the first psychiatrist to win the Nobel prize
1919
The physician Magnus Hirschfeld was able to realize his greatest ambition and to found the world’s first Institute for Sexology. It was housed in one of Berlin’s buildings.
1919
Magnus Hirschfeld becomes one of sexology’s founding fathers when he opens the world’s first sexological institute, the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin. It becomes the first clinic to serve transgender people regularly.
1920
The Menninger Clinic (for mental health patients) is founded in Topeka, Kansas. (Named after William Menninger who pioneered effective treatments for psychiatric casualties in World War II, and Karl Menninger who applied psychoanalytic concepts to American psychiatry
1920
Jonathan Gilbert publishes Homosexuality and Its Treatment, the story of ‘H’, Dr. Alan Hart’s 1917 FTM transition.
1920
Alfred Adler establishes the school of individual psychology and becomes the first psychoanalyst to challenge Freud. He coins the terms ‘lifestyle’ and ‘inferiority complex’ in his book, ‘Study of Organ Inferiority and Its Psychical Compensations’.
1920
A period between the two world wars, Freudian theory shed a faint glow of hope on the outskirts of the custodial asylum. From shortly after the first world war moves were made: away from in-patient treatment towards outpatient treatment towards treatment without certification towards treatment near to patients homes But these moves only touched the edge of the mental health system.”
1927
The Mental Deficiency Act 1927 Local Authorities were given responsibility for providing occupation and training for those with Mental Deficiency. Mental Deficiency was defined as “a condition of arrested or incomplete development of mind existing before the age of 18 years whether arising from ‘inherent causes’ or induced by disease or injury.
1930
Encyclopedia of Sexual Knowledge by Norman Haire 1930 address ”Transvestism” in detail. It also illustrates the First ‘Sex-change’ procedures.
1930
Encyclopaedia of Sexual Knowledge by Norman Haire is published. It addresses transvestism in detail and also illustrates the first ‘sex-change’ procedures.
1930
Lili Elbe undergoes five surgeries, the fifth of which kills her in 1931.
1930- 1931
Dora Richter and Lily Elbe underwent early male-to-female reassignment surgeries including (for Elbe) an ovary and uterus transplant . Baer, Richter and Elbe were aided by Magnus Hirschfeld, whose pioneering work at the ‘Institut fur Sexualwissenschaft for trans medicine and rights’, which the Nazis destroyed in 1933.
1932
Magnus Hirschfeld lectures ‘sexology’ in the United States
1932
Magnus Hirschfeld performs the first ‘documented’ Sexual Reassignment Surgery (SRS) on Dora-R.
1932
Man Into Woman, the story of Lili Elbe’s life, MTF transition, and Sex Reassignment Surgery is published. Elbe’s story of conquering societal pressures and having a long term relationship with artist Gerber Wenger proved how the sexual practices of transgendered people had little to do with how they perceived themselves.
1932
Man Into Woman, the story of Lili Elbe’s life, MTF transition, and SRS is published.
1933
Ernst Rüdin had already begun to incorporate eugenic rhetoric into the racial policies of Nazi Germany. The “Nazis abuse, murder, and sterilization of transgender people. The Institute for Sexology is raided, shut down, and its records destroyed by the Nazis during 1933. Physicians and researchers involved in the clinic flee Germany. Some who are unable to escape and commit suicide over the coming years
1933
The Institute for Sexology is raided, shut down, and its records destroyed by the Nazis. Physicians and researchers involved in the clinic flee Germany. Some, unable to escape, commit suicide in the coming years.
1937
Karen Horney – was a German psychoanalyst who practiced in the United States during her later career. Her theories questioned some traditional Freudian views. This was particularly true of her theories of sexuality and of the instinct orientation of psychoanalysis. Horney, a German-born psychiatrist challenges Freud’s theory of the castration complex in women, and his theory that Oedipal complex and female sexuality influences neurosis. In The Neurotic Personality of Our Time.
1938
Electroshock is first used by Ugo Cerletti to produce convulsions that he thought would alleviate schizophrenic and manic-depressive psychosis; it was later found to be more effective in the later illness and is still in use today. It was most commonly used on transgender people
1939
World War II begins and Hitler decrees that patients with incurable medical illnesses be killed because they are ‘biologically unfit.’ Approximately 270,000 patients with mental illness including the transgendered are killed by physicians and medical personnel complying with the Nazi doctrine of racial purity! Influenced by ‘Eugenics’ which are largely the thoughts and work of Ernst Rudin.
1941
Premarin®, conjugated estrogens collected from pregnant mares is first marketed in Canada. Two years later it is marketed in the United States.
1945
In 1945, Sir Harold Gillies and his colleague Ralph Millard carry out the world’s first sex change of a woman into a man on the young aristocrat, Michael Dillon. Sir Harold Gillies, internationally renowned as the father of modern plastic surgery, played a pioneering wartime role in Britain developing pedicle flap surgery. Gillies later performed surgery on the United Kingdom’s first male-to-female transsexual – Roberta Cowell
1946
Laurence Michael Dillon (born Laura Maud Dillon, 1 May 1915 – 15 May 1962) was a British physician and the first trams man to undergo Phalloplasty procedure. His brother, Sir Robert Dillon, was the eighth Baronet of Lismullen in Ireland.
1946
Congress passes the National Mental Health Act which, for the first time in US history, provides generous funding for psychiatric education and research. This act leads to the creation in 1949 of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
1946
Anna Freud, the youngest daughter of Sigmund Freud, publishes The psychoanalytic Treatment of Children, which introduces basic concepts in the theory and practice of child psychoanalysis
1946
Therapeutic asylums planned in the 1840s are a legacy of failure and have created a network of large asylums full of long-stay patients with little or no hope of rehabilitation. In post war Britain the National Health Service inherited theses asylums which stood in open countryside outside towns, or had been encroached upon by expanding suburbs. Transgender people were still considered insane and housed in them. The National Health Service Act stripped the ‘Board of Control’ of nearly all its functions except those of providing an inspectorate of mental hospitals (particularly concerning compulsory detention).
1947
The foundation of the ‘National Association for Mental Health’
1948
National Health Service Act came into operation. The National Health Service took over from county councils and boroughs with major responsibility for mental health. The reforms of the 1920s and 1930s had only breached the edge of the mental health system. The inheritance of the NHS is a system of over 100 asylums, or “mental hospitals”, with an average population of over 1,000 patients in each
1949
Harry Benjamin treats transsexuals in the US with hormones. (Premarin).950
In Childhood and Society, Erik Erikson restates Freud’s concepts of infantile sexuality and develops the concepts of ‘adult identity,’ and ‘identity crisis.’
1949
Harry Benjamin begins to treat transgender individuals in San Francisco with hormones.
1951
On May 15th, Robert Cowell became Roberta CowelL. The United Kingdom’s first full surgically altered transsexual.
1951
Robert Cowell becomes Roberta Cowell, the United Kingdom’s first fully surgically altered MTF transsexual. The surgery is performed by Sir Harold Gillies.
1952
The American trans woman Christine Jorgensen’s public transition brought widespread awareness to reassignment surgery
1952
The French psychiatrists Jean Delay and Pierre Deniker report that chlorpromazine (Thorazine ®) calms hospitalized chronic schizophrenic patients without causing clinically significant depression. The drug is called ‘The drug is called ‘Hibernotherapye’ because patients became quiet, likened to animals in hibernation.
1952
Christine Jorgensen undergoes SRS in Copenhagen and returns to the US where she is outed by the American press. She causes an international sensation, and for many, she is the first visible transsexual in the media.
1953
Mental Millions ‘B F Skinner publishes ‘Science and Human Behavior’, describing his theory of operant conditioning, an important concept in the development of behavioural therapy
1954
The Royal Commission on the Mental Health Laws (1954 to 1957), under Lord Percy, appointed as a consequence the number of residents in institutions to fall.
1957
Royal Commission on the Mental Health Laws reported. The key themes of the Percy Report were: That ‘mental disorder’ should be regarded “in much the same way as physical illness and disability” (paragraph 5) That hospitals for mental illness should be run as near as possible to those for physical disorders.
1958
Transsexual pioneers Coccinelle, Bambi, and April Ashley are among the first SRS patients of Dr Burou.
1959
By 1959 only 12% of admissions to mental illness hospitals were compulsory and the trend was towards shorter periods of in-patient treatment and assessment with an emphasis on outpatient treatment. (Whilst in 1930 there had been practically no outpatients, by 1959 there were 144,000 attendances at outpatient clinics. ( Maclay, W.S. 1961, p.98)
1959
The 1959 Mental Health Act abolished the ‘Board of Control’
1959
Cooper Do-nuts Riot incident in Los Angeles in which transgender women, lesbian women, drag queens, and gay men rioted, one of the first LGBT uprisings in the United States.
1960
A conflict of cultural beliefs – In England during the 1960s despite hostility to ‘cross- dressing’ within mental health services, Every week in the booming holiday camp industry ‘topsy turvy’ nights encouraged men and women to dress in each other’s clothes at least once during their holiday.
1962
Beaumont Society Founded http://www.beaumontsociety.org.uk/
1964
Reed Erickson launches the Erickson Educational Foundation (EEF), an organisation which helps to support, both through direct financial contributions and through contributions of human and material resources, almost every aspect of work being done in the 1960s and 1970s in the field of transsexualism in the US.
1966
Harry Benjamin publishes ‘The Transsexual Phenomenon’.
1966
The Compton Cafeteria Riot.
1966
August: Compton’s Cafeteria Riots in San Francisco, the first recorded Trans riot in American history. The riot marks a turning point in the local LGBT movement as a network of transgender social, psychological, and medical support services is established.
1967
A change in British law allowed ‘Charing Cross Hospital’ to begin performing SRS.
1968
The International Olympic Committee tests chromosomes of athletes and puts a stop to ‘transsexuals’ competing.
1968
After increased interest Universities begin opening clinics for treating transsexuals. The first sex reassignment surgeries performed on non-intersexed transsexuals.
1968
The National Transsexual Counselling Unit is created in San Francisco as a result of the Compton’s Cafeteria Riots, the first such peer-run support and advocacy organization in the world.
1969
Transgender and gender-nonconforming people are among those who resisted arrest in a routine bar raid on the Stonewall Inn in New York City’s Greenwich Village, thus helping to ignite the modern LGBT rights movement
1969
The Erickson Educational Foundation began sponsoring a series of ‘International Symposia on Gender Identity’
1969
The First Gender Symposia is held. This develops into the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association.
1969
The Stonewall riots (also referred to as the Stonewall uprising or the Stonewall rebellion) were a series of spontaneous, violent demo’s by members of the gay (LGBT) community against a police raid that began in the early morning hours of June 28, at the Stonewall Inn in a Greenwich Village neighbourhood of Manhattan New York City. They are widely considered to constitute the most important event leading to the gay liberation movement and the modern fight for LGBT rights in the USA.
1969
27th/28th June: Transgender and gender non-conforming people are among those who resist arrest in a routine bar raid on the Stonewall Inn in New York City’s Greenwich Village, thus helping to ignite the modern LGBT rights movement.
1970
Angela Douglas a well-known transsexual attends the Peace and Freedom Party as an openly trans delegate and successfully introduces a pro-transsexual rights platform
1970
Corbett v. Corbett 1970 (otherwise April Ashley). The judgment by Justice Ormrod sets a precedent that will leave UK post-op transsexual people unable to marry-until the 21st Century – During September 1963 the parties went through a ceremony of marriage. April Corbett’s (nee: Ashley) marriage is annulled and she is declared to be legally still a man despite sex reassignment surgery.
1970
William Masters and Virginia Johnson’s work revolutionizes knowledge and attitudes about sex. They revise Freud’s theories of orgasm, report on sexual relationships in geriatrics, and find counseling helps most people with sexual dysfunction. ‘Sex therapy’ as a psychiatric specialty follows.
1972
John Money publishes Man & Woman, Boy & Girl: Gender Identity from Conception to Maturity. Money cites his famous ‘John/Joan case’, which he claims as being the socialization of a boy whose penis had been lost in a circumcision accident, to be raised successfully as a girl.
1972
The AMA first officially sanctions SRS as the treatment for transsexualism. “Gender Dysphoria Syndrome” was coined a year later by Norman Fisk.
1973
New York Trans-Activist Silvia Rivera is followed at a Gay Pride Rally by Jean O’Leary who denounces transgendered people as female impersonators profiting from derision and oppression of women
1973
Beth Elliott, aka “Mustang Sally,” becomes vice-president of the ‘Daughters of Bilitis’. Soon after, she is ‘denounced and outed’ as transsexual and hounded out of the organization by transphobic lesbian separatists.
1973
Political pressure from the National Gay Task Force, the American Psychiatric Association changes the diagnosis of homosexuality from a disease to a ‘condition’.
1974
During February the Labour Government’s Jan Morris, one of Britain’s top journalists who covered wars and rebellions around the globe and even climbed Mount Everest, published ‘Conundrum’, a personal account of her transition. The book is now considered a classic.
1974
Jan Morris, one of Britain’s top journalists who covered wars and rebellions around the globe and even climbed Mount Everest, publishes Conundrum, a personal account of her transition. The book is now considered a classic.
1976
Tennis ace Reneé Richards is outed and barred from the competition when she attempts to enter a women’s tennis tournament. Her subsequent legal battle establishes that transsexuals are legally accepted in their new identity after reassignment, in the US.
1977
Brain material provided by the Netherlands Brain Bank demonstrates transsexualism is a pre-birth medical condition and not a ‘state-of-mind’. They present findings of somatostatin neuronal sex differences in the BSTc and its sex reversal in the transsexual brain support the paradigm that in transsexuals sexual differentiation of the brain and genitals may go into opposite directions and point to a neurobiological basis of ‘gender identity disorder’.
1979
A series of programs entitled A Change of Sex are aired by the BBC. For the first time, viewers are able to follow pre-op transsexual Julia Grant through her transition. It also highlights the arrogance at that time of psychiatrists based at the Gender Identity Clinic at Charing Cross Hospital in London.
1979
Thatcher Government – A series of programs entitled ‘A Change of Sex’ are aired on the BBC – viewers could for the first time follow pre-op transsexual Julia Grant through her transition. It also highlighted the arrogance at that time of psychiatrists based at the Gender Identity Clinic, Charing Cross Hospital London.
1979
Harry Benjamin’s International Gender Dysphoria Association for the promotion of transsexual standards of care founded
1980
October: MIND Conference is held by the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association to promote the newly founded Standards of Care (SOC). The SOC goes on to become the foundation for the treatment of transsexuals worldwide.
1980
The original transgender standards of care guidelines were published by the Harry Benjamin’s International Gender Dysphoria Association. The first five versions were published in 1979, 1980, 1981, 1990, 1998 and 2001.
1980’s
Louis Graydon Sullivan (June 16, 1951 – March 2, 1991) an American author/activist known for his work on behalf of trans men. Was perhaps the first transgender man to publicly identify as gay, and is largely responsible for the modern understanding of sexual orientation and gender identity as distinct, unrelated concepts Sullivan was a pioneer of the grassroots female-to-male (FTM) movement and was instrumental in helping individuals obtain peer-support, counselling, endocrinological services and reconstructive surgery outside of gender dysphoria clinics.
He founded FTM Intranational, one of the first organizations specifically for FTM individuals, and his activism and community work was a significant contributor to the rapid growth of the FTM community during the late 1980s.
1980
The American Psychiatric Association listed transsexualism as an official disorder in the DSM-III. The diagnosis was changed to “gender identity disorder” in the DSM-IV.
1987
Dr. Harry Benjamin dies (1885-1987
1989
Christine Jorgensen dies (1927 – 1989)
1989
Celebrated jazz musician Billy Tipton died in Spokane, Washington, revealing that he was a woman. Tipton, who played in big bands in the 40s and 50s, lived for 56 years as a man, marrying several times and raising children.
1990
The Gender Trust is founded in the UK; the largest UK charity supporting anyone affected by gender identity issues.
1991
1991 Transvestite comedian Eddie Izzard receives a nomination for the Prestigious ‘Perrier’ Comedy Award at the Edinburgh Festival
1992
Jean Burkhalter is ejected from the Michigan Women’s Music Festival by transphobic festival organizers.
1992
27th February: Press For Change is founded in a London coffee house.
1993
Cheryl Chase founded the Intersex Society of North America (ISNA) to build awareness and offer support to intersex people
1993
Minnesota passes the first law in the US which prohibits discrimination against transgendered people. The Minnesota statute establishes protections for transgendered people under the rubric of sexual orientation.
1993
Transgender youth Brandon Teena is raped and murdered in Humboldt, Nebraska by members of his circle of friends, when they discover he was born female. This hate crime brought widespread attention to transgender discrimination and violence and became the subject of the Oscar-winning film, Boys Don’t Cry.
1993
“March On Washington” organizers include bisexuals but refused to include ‘Transgender’ in the name of the march, angering TG activists that had worked for months to gain inclusion
1993
Transgendered youth Brandon Teena was raped and murdered in Humboldt, Nebraska. This hate crime brought widespread attention to transgender discrimination and violence and became the subject of the award-winning film ‘Boys Don’t Cry ’.
1993
“Camp Trans” for three consecutive years is pitched outside of the entrance gate to the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival to protest the Festival’s newly publicized “Womyn-Born-Womyn Only” anti-transsexual policy
1993
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
1994
Trans-Gender activists protest exclusion from Stonewall 25 celebrations and the Gay Games in New York City. The Gay Games rescinds rules that require “documented completion of sex change” before allowing transgendered individuals to compete.
1994
Several cities on the west coast of the U.S. pass anti-discrimination statutes protecting transsexual and transgendered people.
1995
The First All FTM Conference of the Americas organized by Jamison Green and Jason Cromwell.
1995
Transsexual activists protest the stealing of TS/TG History by the Gay & Lesbian community. Efforts by the Ad Hoc Committee to grant recognition of Alan Hart successfully pressure Oregon’s Right to Privacy (RTP, now known as “Right to Pride”) political action committee to cease using Alan Hart’s old name as an award given out to Gay & Lesbian rights activists
1996
JoAnna McNamara of It’s Time Oregon successfully convinces Oregon’s Bureau of Labour and Industry (BOLI) that transsexuals are protected under existing Oregon labour law dealing with discrimination of people with disabilities and medical conditions. This made Oregon the third state to extend employment protections to transgendered people, following Minnesota and Nebraska.
1997
Milton Diamond and Dr. H. Keith Sigmundson publish a paper that exposes John Money’s claims of success in the ‘John/Joan’ case. ‘John/Joan’ is David Reimer, who is not settling into his reassigned gender as ‘Brenda’, as well as Money, believes. Sigmundson is David Reimer’s supervising psychiatrist at that time, and the two describe Reimer’s literal quest to regain his manhood.
1997
Trans activist Leslie Feinberg published Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman, a who’s who of transgender people throughout world history that traces the roots of transgender oppression.
1998
John Colapinto publishes As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised As A Girl which tells David Reimer’s story in depth.
1998
28th November: Rita Hester is murdered at her home in Boston. Discussion about the transphobic violence that caused her death and that of many others inspire activists (including Gwendolyn Ann Smith, who curates the list) to catalogue and commemorate these deaths in the form of the Transgender Day of Remembrance. The first is held in San Francisco but soon becomes an annual event, commemorated annually on November 20th worldwide.
1998
1998 Julie Hesmondhalgh joins Coronation Street (Britain’s longest-running television soap) as transsexual character Hayley Patterson. Of Transgender Zone was the first to run her interview’s in the TG press!
1998
Dana International becomes the first transsexual woman to win the Eurovision Song Contest singing a song called ‘Diva’.
1998
Transgender activists protest exclusion from the ‘Gay Games’ in Amsterdam. The Gay Games reinstates rules that require “documented completion of sex change or two years of hormones” before allowing transgendered individuals to compete. Loren Cameron, FTM trans-man, expected to compete, drops out of competition in protest. However, European singer and transsexual, Dana International perform at the Games’ festivities.
1998
Japan allows first legal Sex Reassignment Surgery to be performed on an FtM
1999
Brain material provided by the Netherlands Brain Bank demonstrates transsexualism is a medical condition and not a ‘state-of-mind’. The present findings of somatostatin neuronal sex differences in the BSTc and its sex reversal in the transsexual brain support the paradigm that in transsexuals’ sexual differentiation of the brain and genitals may go into opposite directions and point to a neurobiological basis of gender identity disorder.
1999
The UK Sex Discrimination Act is amended to include protections based on Gender Reassignment. Sex Discrimination (Gender Reassignment) Regulations
1999
In a Texas court, In Littleton vs. Prang, Christine Littleton, and a post-op MTF transsexual loses her case against a doctor who she contended negligently allowed her husband to die. The doctors’ defence lawyers argued that she was never married to her late husband since her Texas birth certificate, though now amended to read female originally read male, therefore she could not be the widow as the law does not allow “same-sex marriage.” Her appeal to a higher court failed when falling on bigoted ears Christine Littleton was declared to be still male despite having taken all of the proper medical and legal steps. Thus, transsexual citizens of the United States joined those of the United Kingdom in finding that their legal status is in legal limbo.
1999
Statutory Instrument 1999 No. 1102 In a judgment delivered at Strasbourg on 11 July 2002 in the case of Christine Goodwin v. the United Kingdom application no. 28957/95), the European Court of Human Rights held unanimously that there had been a violation of Article 8 (right to respect for private and family life) of the European Convention on Human Rights; there had been a violation of Article 12 (right to marry and to found a family); no separate issue had arisen under Article 14 (prohibition of discrimination); there had been no violation of Article 13 (right to an effective remedy). The Court held, unanimously, that the finding of a violation constituted in itself sufficient just satisfaction for the non-pecuniary damage sustained by the applicant and awarded the applicant 39,000 euros for costs and expenses This led the way for the later Gender Recognition Act to become UK law The Full Legal Judgment is available here: http://www.transgenderzone.com/library/uz.htm
1999
The Draft [Gender Recognition] Bill is the Government’s response to decisions of the European Court of Human Rights and the House of Lords holding those aspects of English legislation violate rights under ECHR Article 8 (respect for private life) and Article 12 (right to marry) so far as it refuses to give legal recognition to a transsexual person’s reassigned gender.
1999
Jonathan Ned Katz publishes the connection between Gilbert’s “H” and Alan Hart. He also incorrectly characterizes Dr. Hart as a “lesbian,” effectively stealing transgender history.
1999
Georgina Beyer a New Zealand politician and former Labour Party Member of Parliament. Was the world’s first openly transgender major, as well as the world’s first openly transgender Members of Parliament.
1999
Littleton v. Prang (Texas). Christine Littleton, a post-op MTF transsexual loses her negligence case against the doctor who allowed her husband to die. Defence lawyers argue that she was never married to her late husband because her birth certificate, though now amended to read female, originally read male. The legal status of post-op transsexuals in the US is a legal limbo.
1999
May: The UK Sex Discrimination Act is amended to include protections on the basis of Gender Reassignment.
2002
Goodwin v. the United Kingdom. The European Court of Human Rights holds unanimously that aspects of English law violate rights under the European Convention of Human Rights because it refuses to give legal recognition to a transsexual person’s reassigned gender.
2002
Gwen ‘Lida’ Araujo is murdered by several partygoers, who had discovered her male genitalia. The three men who were charged alternately resort to panic strategies during their defence, trying to minimize or legitimize their actions because of their apparent shock at the discovery.
2003
British transvestite Grayson Perry awarded Turner prize. “Grayson Perry, 43 scooped the controversial Turner prize, and collected £20,000 at a ceremony at ‘Tate Britain’ in London, dressed as alter ego Claire.
2003
Lausanne Switzerland – Transsexuals will be able to compete at the Athens Olympics if they have had appropriate surgery and are legally recognized as members of their new sex the International Olympic Committee decides.
2003
The Draft [Gender Recognition] Bill is the Government’s response to the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights and the House of Lords in the case of Goodwin v. the United Kingdom.
2003
British transvestite potter Grayson Perry scoops the controversial Turner prize, and collects £20,000 at a ceremony at Tate Britain in London, dressed as alter ego Claire.
2003
The United Kingdom Gender Recognition Act becomes law on the 10th of February. Offering transgender people full legal recognition of change of gender. http://www.transgenderzone.com/library/uz.htm”
2003
On Friday the 6th August Portuguese post-operative transsexual Nadia Armada 27 of Surrey won the United Kingdom reality Gameshow ” Big Brother 5 and took away prize money of 63,500 pounds and the hearts of the nation.
2004
David Reimer, the subject of John Money’s ‘Joan/John’ case, commits suicide at the age of 38.
2004
10th February: The Gender Recognition Act becomes law, allowing transgender persons to legally change their sex and have it recognized for the purposes of marriage and other issues.
2005
The Civil Partnership Act (2004) is passed, prior to coming into effect.
2004
The International Olympic Committee decides that transsexuals will be able to compete at the Athens Olympics if they have had appropriate surgery and are legally recognized as members of their new sex.
2005
Mercury Music Prize New York-based but English born frontman Antony Hegarty was declared a winner at the ceremony at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London with their album ‘I am a Bird Nw’ To what degree does Antony himself feel female, or at least latently, potentially so? Do I feel female? Y’know, I feel like a mixture. I feel pretty mixed. I probably would identify as transgender (Quote from NME)
2006
Gwen Amber Rose (Aged 17 Years Old) was beaten and strangled in the USA October 2002 resulting in worldwide outrage. After a retrial the Jury Found (2) Defendants Guilty Of Second Degree Murder Michael Magidson and Jose Merel – Jason Cazares Pleaded Guilty to Voluntary Manslaughter Sentences Delivered on January 27, 2006:Michael Magidson – Age 25 [Murder 2] Mandatory 15 years to life Jose Merel – Age 26 [Murder 2] Mandatory 15 years to life – Jason Cazares – Age 26 [Voluntary Manslaughter] 6 years Jaron Nabors – Age 24 [Voluntary Manslaughter] is serving an 11-year sentence
2006
Felicity Huffman is nominated for an Oscar for her role as ‘Bree’ in the worldwide hit road movie Transamerica.
2006
The Gwen Araujo Justice for Victims Act becomes law in the US. The bill, fuelled by the murder of Gwen Araujo and the 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.
2006
The Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association changes its name to the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH). The omission of the term ‘Social Care’ from the title angers many non-medical support workers worldwide.
2007
Spain passes the most progressive law regarding gender identity in the world. It allows for the change of documented identity just by requiring medical treatment for two years, and a medical or psychological certificate which proves a diagnosis of gender dysphoria; it does not require SRS.
2017
Tomoya Hosoda born 14 November 1991) is a Japanese politician who, became the first transgender male politician to be elected to office when he was elected to the city council of Iruma Saitama. He transitioned from female to male with surgery in 2015 at the age of 23.[4][5][a] After graduating from Teikyo University, he had worked as medical technologist at a hospital in Shizuoka before he was elected.[ Tomoya Hosoda (細田 智也, Hosoda Tomoya, born 14 November 1991[1]) is a Japanese politician who, on 17 March 2017, became the first transgender male politician to be elected to office when he was elected to the city council of Iruma, Saitama.[2][3] At this time
In Oceania, trans-/third-gender roles like the ‘akava’ine’, ‘fa’afafine’, and ‘fakaleiti’ exist among the Cook Island Maori, Samoans, and Tongans.