Trans History
by Gabriel Dubransky
On June 28 in 1969 the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Greenwich Village, was raided by the police. The laws at the time banning public displays of homosexuality and requiring “gender-appropriate clothing” were weak excuses that allowed police to violently attack queer and trans people. Most of the time, patrons of the bar were tipped off when police were going to invade, and were able to evacuate before they got there. However, on the day of the uprising, they were not. Police invaded the bar, attacking patrons and arresting 13 people. Instead of fleeing for their safety like the patrons had learned to do, the rising tensions of queerphobia that permeated their every experience sparked an anger that day. As a lesbian was beat while she was forced into a police car, Marsha P. Johnson, a Black drag queen, threw a brick at the police, prompting many other patrons of the bar to join, the beginning of an uprising that created the modern gay rights movement.
In 1959 a trans woman named Christine Jorgenson was denied a marriage license as same-sex marriage was not yet legal and her assigned sex at birth was the same as her fiance’s. However, in 1976, during M.T. v. J.T., the Superior Court of New Jersey ruled that trans people could marry on the basis of gender identity, not assigned sex at birth, which marked a big change in trans rights. The legal rights of trans people were on a state-by-state basis until the success of the Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court case in June of 2015, legalizing marriage between any gender. However, marriage is not the only area in which trans people have suffered legally. On January 22, 2019, the Trump administration put the Transgender Military Ban in place, not allowing trans people to serve in the military. In the first week of Biden’s presidency, however, Biden repealed the ban, and in March of 2021 the military announced that they would provide a process to help trans members transition while serving. In many sports, though, trans people are not allowed to compete with others of their gender identity on biological grounds. The stressors of being trans in America often lead to psychological issues, causing the rate of attempted suicide for trans adolescents to average about ⅓, and causing over half of trans adolescents to engage in self-harm. Trans people, especially transfeminine people, report higher levels of abuse and harassment around their gender identity, with trans women, and more specifically Black trans women at the highest risk for murder of any group in the U.S. Despite the troubles that trans people face, they continue fighting for their rights and their joy.
In the long history of trans people in America, there have been many norms, stereotypes, and terms that have risen and fallen over time. Listed are some current terms that help describe the trans experience.
Transgender (adj.) - denoting or relating to a person whose sense of personal identity and gender does not correspond with their birth sex
Cisgender (adj.) - denoting or relating to a person whose sense of personal identity and gender corresponds with their birth sex
Transition (noun) - the process by which a person permanently adopts the outwad or physical characteristics of the gender with which they identify, as opposed to those associated with their birth sex. The process may or may not involve measures such as hormone therapy or gender reassignment surgery
AFAB (adj.) - assigned female at birth
AMAB (adj.) - assigned male at birth
Transfeminine (adj.) - noting or relating to a person who was assigned male at birth but whose gender identity is more female than male
Transmasculine (adj.) - noting or relating to a person who was assigned female at birth but whose gender identity is more male than female
Genderqueer (adj.) - denoting or relating to a person who does not subscribe to conventional gender distinctions but identifies with neither, both, or a combination of male and female genders (similar terms include non-binary and genderfluid)
Gender non-conforming (adj.) - denoting or relating to a person whose behavior or appearance does not conform to prevailing cultural and social expectations about what is appropriate to their gender
Transexual (adj.) - denoting or relating to a transgender person, especially one whose bodily characteristics have been altered through surgery or hormone treatment to bring them into alignment with their gender identity (first used in 1923, it is considered an offensive term by some but is still used by some trans people)
Drag (noun) - entertainment in which performers caricature or challenge gender stereotypes (as by dressing in clothing that is stereotypical of another gender, by using exaggeratedly gendered mannerisms, or by combining elements of stereotypically male and female dress) and often wear elaborate or outrageous costumes
Sources
https://www.history.com/topics/gay-rights/the-stonewall-riots
https://www.thoughtco.com/transgender-rights-in-the-united-states-721319
https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/144/5/e20191183
Definitions from Oxford Dictionary