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Welcome
to our site dedicated to the transsexuals!
First things first lets set defention to the term
transsexuality
Transsexuality is... The medical definition of a transsexual is
someone who feels strongly that they should belong to the opposite
sex and that they were born the wrong body, the person will feel
a sense of estrangement from there own body coupled with a sense
of hatred towards the parts of it that identify their gender. They
will seek surgical and medical treatment so that they can physically
resemble the sex that they feel they should have been and they desire
to live as a member of that gender in the community. As with all
medical definitions in this field it is not set in stone, not all
transsexuals will have every indication.
Timeline of transsexual history:
1907 - Harry Benjamin Meets Magnus Hirschfeld
1910 Magnus Hirschfeld coins the term “transvestite”
1919 - Magnus Hirschfeld founds the Institute for
Sexology in Berlin, Germany, which becomes the first clinic to serve
transgendered people on a regular basis.
1920 - Jonathan Gilbert publishes “Homosexuality
and Its Treatment” the story of “H”, Dr. Alan
Hart’s 1917 FTM transition 1923 Magnus Hirschfeld coins the
term “transsexual”
1931 - “Genital Reassignment of Two Male
Transvestites”, is published by Felix Abraham, M.D. 1932 Harry
Benjamin arranges a speaking tour for Magnus Hirschfeld in the United
States. 1932 Man Into Woman, the story of Lili Elbe’s life,
MTF transition, and Sex Reassignment Surgery is published.
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. Magnus Hirschfeld dies in 1935, an
exile in Paris.
1938 - Di-Ethyl Stilbesterol (DES) is introduced
into chicken feed as a means of increasing meat production. Later
the drug is marketed to pregnant women to prevent miscarriage, a
claim that was never substantiated. The drug causes serious heath
problems in the children whose mother’s took the drug while
pregnant; endometrioses, cancer, infertility, intersex and possibly
transsexuality. (The drug is still available but no longer recommended
for pregnant women.)
1941 - Premarin®, conjugated estrogens collected
from pregnant mares is first marketed in Canada. Two years later
it is marketed in the United States.
1949 - Harry Benjamin begins to treat transsexuals
in San Francisco and New York with hormones.
1952 - Christine Jorgensen is “outed”
in the American press. She begins a life long effort to educate
the public about transsexual people.
1966 - Harry Benjamin publishes The Transsexual
Phenomenon.. 1968 Olympic Commmittee begins chromosome testing of
female athletes, effectively banning transsexuals and some intersexed
individuals (some of whom were fertile as female, with children)
from competition.
1968 - Universities begin opening clinics for treating
transsexuals; First surgeries performed on non-intersexed transsexuals.
1969 - Sylvia Rivera throws a bottle at cops harrassing
queers at a local bar... The Stonewall Riots in New York galvanize
the Gay & Lesbian community... Transgender people are in the
heart of the riot and the organizing that followed.
1970 - April Corbet’s (neé Ashley)
marriage is annulled and declared to be legally still a man inspite
of a legal sex reassignment, leaving United Kingdom post-operative
transsexuals in legal limbo, unable to marry as either sex.
1973 - Beth Elliott, aka: “Mustang Sally,”
becomes vice-president of the Daughters of Bilitis. Soon after,
she is ‘outed’ as transsexual and hounded out of the
organization by transphobic lesbian separatists.
1973 - New York TransActivist 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.
1974 - Jan Morris publishes Conundrum 1976 Reneé
Richards is ‘outed’ and barred from competition when
she attempts to enter a womens’ tennis tournement. Her subsequent
legal battle establishes that transsexuals are fully, legally, recognized
in their new identity after sex reassignment, in the United States.
1976 - 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.
1977 - Sandy Stone is ‘outed’ while
working for Olivia Records as a recording engineer. Lesbian separatists
threaten a boycott of Olivia products and concerts, forcing the
record company to ask for Stone’s resignation. Angela Douglas
writes a satirical letter to Sister as a protest of the transphobia
in the lesbian community in general and the virulent attacks on
Sandy Stone in particular.
1979 - Janice Raymond publishes The Transsexual
Empire, a semi-scholarly transphobic attack. In the book she cites
Douglas’ Sister letter out of context as an example of transsexual
misogyny and casts Sandy Stone’s involvment in Olivia Records
as “devisive” and “patriarchal.”
1980 - Joanna Clark organizes the ACLU Transsexual
Rights Committee. 1980 Paul Walker organizes the Harry Benjamin
International Gender Dysphoria Association to promote standards
of care of transsexual and transgendered clients.
1989 - Billy Tipton, a minor, but well respected,
jazz musician, dies and is discovered to be female... after presenting
as a man since 1933.
1992 - Jean Burkholter is ejected from the Michigan
Womyn’s Music Festival by transphobic festival organizers.
1993 - Cheryl Chase founds Intersex Society of
North America (ISNA)
1993 - “March On Washington” organizers
include bisexuals but refuse to include TransGender in the name
of the march, angering TG activists that had worked for months to
get inclusion
1993 - “Camp Trans” 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. “Camp Trans” is
pitched for three years running.
1993 - TransActivists 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 - TranGender activists protest exclusion from
Stonewall 25 celebrations and the Gay Games in New York City. The
Gay Games recinds 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 - Transsexual activists protest the stealing
of TS/TG History by the Gay & Lesbian community. Efforts by
the Ad Hoc Committee to Recognize 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 Labor and Industry
(BOLI) that transsexuals are protected under existing Oregon labor
law dealing with discrimination of people with disabilities and
medical conditions. This made Oregon the third state to extend employment
protection to transgendered people, following Minnesota and Nebraska.
1998 - TranGender 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 transman, expected to compete, drops
out of competion in protest. However, European singer and transsexual,
Dana International performs at the Games’ festivities.
1998 - Japan allows first legal Sex Reassignment
Surgery to be performed on a FTM.
1999 - “Camp Trans” is revived to protest
at the the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. Post-op MTF transsexuals
are allowed to attend the festival, but confrontations with transphobic
lesbian separatists occur.
1999 - In a Texas court, In Littleton vs. Prang,
Christine Littleton, a post-op MTF transexual loses her case against
the doctor who she contended neglegently allowed her husband to
die, when the doctors’ defence lawyers argue that she was
never married to her late husband since her Texas birth certificate,
though now amended to read female, originally read male, and thus
could not be the widow as the law does not allow “same sex
marriage.” Her appeal to a higher court fell on bigoted ears,
she was declared to be still male inspite of having taken all of
the proper medical and legal steps. Thus, transsexual citizens of
the United States joined those of the United Kindom in finding that
their legal status is in legal limbo.
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