13 March 2011
A brief, incomplete history of trans people in the media
Transcript of a talk given to the Cambridge University Students' Union for LGBT History Month in February 2011, and again at The T Party for Brighton Winter Pride in March 2011.
Juliet Jacques
http://julietjacques.blogspot.com/2011/03/brief-incomplete-history-of-trans.htmlThe history of 'trans' people in the media long pre-dates the umbrella term – a contraction of 'transgender', which intended to draw together transsexual and transvestite people, as well as anyone else who considered themselves beyond the gender binary, for political purposes.
Before the twentieth century, when sexologists began to explore gender dysphoria, eventually making its medical treatment technologically possible, there were no words for transgender behaviour beyond 'cross-dressing', which was commonly understood as a homosexual subculture. The first known print use of the word 'homosexual' came in an anonymous pamphlet published in Prussia in 1869, arguing for a repeal of the country's anti-sodomy laws – just a year before the British high-profile trial of Ernest 'Stella' Boulton and Frederick 'Fanny' Park, who cruised London nightspots en femme and were frequently taken as women.
