Transsexuals in the Past

[Stephanie]

Have you ever wonder how transsexuals in past centuries coped with being TS?  It must have been hell having to go your entire life living a lie.  Imagine not having access to hormones or surgery?  Imagine being even less understood than we are today.

[iminadaze]

Strange as it is, it was probably easier for them to blend in....at least to others.

Some may have been TS and they would likely not have known




Post Merge: January 25, 2009, 03:34:16 PM
OK thinking more about it and putting myself in thier shoes, removing hormones, surgery, etc... from
even being a concept, I think the only way I could cope would be by trying to look as much like the
GG's as possible.

Even though my gender did not match my body I wouldn't have understood it and I would have just expressed
myself the way I felt and would have thought it to be normal that I did what the ladies did......

Wow! I now wish I was born in that century rather than this, it seems easier when it is simplified to the
only option possible is to look like a lady which seems to be accepted back then.

[Hypatia]

How many unexplained suicides were there in yesteryear-- the real reasons for which were concealed and lost to history? I feel uncomfortable to think of all the untreated TS down through the centuries and what that must have done to people.

[Northern Jane]

In many other cultures, there were avenues of expression, 'lifestyles' that were accepted, through which a mis-gendered person could find expression. The Judaic-Christian culture does not have those options.

I was in my teens (1960's) when I first met other TS and the life expectancy for someone 'expressing early' was about 25. Because transsexualism was almost unknown and was certainly not talked about, most suicides were attributed to other causes.

With the introduction of the Birth Control Pill in 1962, hormones became more widely available (though not always legally). Dr. Harry Benjamin was one of the first doctors to write prescriptions for this purpose. Myself, I got estrogens whenever, where ever and however I could (I will not mention where because many sources were unsafe).

I was seriously suicidal by age 23 because SRS was out of reach until I was rescued by Dr. Biber the following spring.

[BunnyBee]

I've always found this story interesting:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles-Genevi%C3%A8ve-Louis-Auguste-Andr%C3%A9-Timoth%C3%A9e_%C3%89on_de_Beaumont

From another article:

Diplomat, writer, spy, and Freemason, a member of the elite Dragoons and one of the best swordsmen France, whose true gender was a source of speculation and provoked public bets in the late 18th century. Generally it was believed that d'Eon was born female, but he had started to dress as a man in his childhood, and changed back from "a bad boy into a good girl" when his secret was revealed decades later. After his death it turned out that he was a man who had dressed as a woman.