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Stryker-TheDifficultDecades.pdf
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Copyright© 2008, 2017 by Susan Stryker
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Stryker, Susan, author. Title: Transgender history: the roots of today's revolution I Susan Stryker. Description: Second edition. I Berkeley: Seal Press, 2017. I Revised edition
of the author's Transgender history, c2008. Identifiers: LCCN 20170259641ISBN9781580056892 (paperback) I ISBN
9781580056908 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Transgenderism-History. I Gender identity-History. I
Transgender people-History. Classification: LCC HQ77.9 .S77 2017 I DDC 306.76/8-dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017025964
LSC-C
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
1his book is dedicated to the trans people who the lives that made the history I've outlined
trans people, and our friends allies living
who continue to make history by advancing cause of social justice.
CHAPTER 4
THE DIFFICULT DECADES
BY THE EARLY 1970s, US American culture-especially popular
culture-had undergone some startling transformations as a result
of the upheavals of the 1960s. One of the most visible differences
was a sudden proliferation of gender styles that broke free from the
more rigid codes still in place in the early 1960s. In those earlier
years, a woman wearing pants in public would still raise eyebrows,
and a man with hair long enough to touch the collar of his shirt
would be looked at with suspicion. After a decade of "sex, drugs,
and rock and roll," more unisex fashions had become common, and
there was a greater acceptance of traditionally masculine clothing on
women. Men did not have the same license to embrace traditionally
feminine clothing, but even so, society allowed them a greater range
of expression in their appearance. On the cultural fringe, avant-
garde transgender theatrical and musical acts such as the Cockettes
and Sylvester (on the West Coast} and Wayne (later Jayne) County
and the New York Dolls (on the East Coast) inspired the better-
known gender-bending styles of glam ·rocker David Bowie and
filmmaker John Waters's cult movie star Divine. High art and low-
life swirled around pop artist Andy Warhol's Factory, helping pop- ularize countercultural icons such as Lou Reed and the transgender
115
116 TRANSGENDER HISTORY
Warhol superstars Candy Darling, Jackie Curtis, and Holl~ Wood- lawn, and infusing the glam, glitter, and early punk music scenes
. h M , Kansas City and CBGB. What could be m venues sue as ax s described as a "transgender aesthetic," a new relationship between
gendered appearance and biological sex, was becoming hip ~nd c-o~l for countercultural audiences. But these stylistic innovauons did
little to alter institutionalized forms of sexism and social oppression
based on gender. Even as transgender styles began inching into the
cultural mainstream, people who lived transgender lives from day
to day began to experience a profound backlash against the recent
gains made by people like themselves.
Backlash and Watershed
Transgender people were not alone in experiencing a political back-
lash. By the early 1970s, reactionary tactics. by the government
had violently shut down many countercultural tendencies that had
d . th 1960s The escalation of the war in Vietnam con-emerge m e . tinued; antiwar activism and racial unrest roiled the streets of the
nation from coast to coast, and the FBI' s domestic surveillance pro-
gram infiltrated many antiestablishment groups and movements.
Members of the Black Panther Party were murdered by the p.olice
in Chicago, and antiwar student protesters were killed by Nau~nal Guard troops at Kent State University in Ohio. In San Francisco,
the National Transsexual Counseling Unit was wrecked by reac-
tionary members of the police department, who entrapped one of
the peer counselors there in a drug bust; a police i~formant pre- tended to be sexually and romantically interested m the NTCU
employee and then, after dating her for a few weeks, asked her to
. cor hi"m and to bring it to work, where he would buy score cocaine u it from her. Once the drugs were on the premises, officers swoope~ in for the arrests. They also planted narcotics in Elliott Blackstone s
The Difficult Decades 117
desk, unsuccessfully attempting to frame him. The peer counselor
was convicted on drug charges and spent two years in jail, and
Blackstone, though he remained on the police force for a few more
years until q~alifying for his retirement pension, was reassigned to a new job iµ which he didn't interact with the city's transgender
scene. The NTCU limped along for a while longer, bui-the agency
dosed in 197 4, when the Erickson foundation stopped funding it.
The rise of university-based sex change programs during the late
1960s and early 1970s illustrates the complex cultural politics of
transgender issues at this historical juncture. Some university-based
research on transgender identification had been conducted at the
University of California in the early 1950s, and the Gender Iden-
tity Research Clinic had been established on the UCLA campus in
1962. Within months of the publication of Harry Benjamin's The Transsexual Phenomenon in 1966, however, Johns Hopkins Univer-
sity opened the first medical program in the United States to com-
bine scientific research into the biology and psychology of gender
with the expert evaluation of transgender individuals for hormone
treatment and genital surgery. Similar programs quickly followed
at other major research universities. These years, between the mid-
1960s and the late 1970s, represent what could be called the "Big Science" period of transgender history.
On the one hand, this heightened level of attention represented
a welcome development for transgender people in the United States
who wanted to physically change their sex. Before the development
of these programs, US trans people who sought surgery usually had
to leave the country to find services overseas or in Latin America,
and many simply could not afford to do so. These new programs,
some of which were free of charge to qualified research participants,
made "sex change" domestically available for the first time. On the
other hand, as trans people seeking surgery and hormones quickly
discovered, the new university-based scientific research programs
118 TRANSGENDER HISTORY
were far more concerned with restabilizing the gender system,
which seemed to be mutating all around them in bizarre and threat-
ening directions, than they were with helping that cultural revolu-
tion along by further exploding mandatory relationships between
sexed embodiment, psychological gender identity, and social gender
role. Access to transsexual medical services thus became entangled
with a socially conservative attempt to maintain traditional gender
configurations in which changing sex was grudgingly permitted for
the few seeking to do so, to the extent that the practice did not
trouble the gender binary for the many.
The elaboration of an elite university-based medical research
culture around "sex change" had significant consequences for trans-
gender political activism. Transgenderism and homosexuality had
been conceptually interrelated since the nineteenth century, and
transgender politics, the homophile movement, and gay liberation
had run alongside one another and sometimes intersected through-
out the 1950s and 1960s. The early 1970s, however, represented
a watershed moment in this shared history when the transgender
political movement lost its alliances with gay and feminist com-
munities in ways that did not begin to be repaired until the early
1990s and that, in many ways, have yet to be fully overcome. Al-
though gay liberation and feminism are typically considered polit-
ically progressive developments, for transgender people they often
constituted another part of the backlash, in large part because of the
different relationships these movements and identities had to insti-
tutionalized medical, scientific, and legal powers and to minority
civil rights discourse. Consider, for example, how the course of the war in Vietnam
affected gay male and transgender community dynamics. Direct US
involvement in Southeast Asian military conflicts began to esca-
late after the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident in which communist
North Vietnamese boats were accused of firing on the vessels of
The Difficult Decades 119
TECHNIQUE OF OPERATION (DR. WOLF)
FIG. 6. Castration, Amputation of Penis and Implantation of Urethra 1. C~~~. cavernosum peni, ischio-cavemosus 4. Testicle
5. Scrotum 2. Bulbus urethrae, bulbo.cavernosus muse.
3. Spermatic cord 6. Tuber ischiadicum
7. Anus
Medical ~rawing ~fa male-to-female genital conversion operation (1958), included zn the text Homosexuality, Transvestitism, and Change of Sex, by Eugene de Savitsch. (PHoTo CREDIT: HEINEMANN BOOKS.)
US military advisers; major commitments of US ground troops
followed in 1965. The countercultural hippie style popular among
both gays and straights-with its bright, flowing fabrics, long hair,
and love beads-represented a deliberate reversal of the gender
co~v~ntions of militaristic masculinity and signaled political op- pos1t1on to the war. One popular sexual liberation slogan from the
height of the antiwar movement was "Fuck, Don't Fight"; an un-
stated but equally apropos slogan for many draft-age men would
have been "Genderfuck, Don't Fight." It should not be surprising
~hat the period when transfeminine people made their most signif- icant political gains overlapped with a period in which public gen-
der transgression by cisgender men had the broadest and deepest
sense of political urgency. Significantly, however, when major US
involvement in Vietnam began to wind down, after the 1973 Paris
Peace Accords, the gender coding of men's clothing styles simul-
taneously began to shift. In gay male culture, 1973 was the year
120 TRANSGENDER HISTORY
. " 1 1 k" f denim plaid, and short haircuts that the masculine c one oo o ' f ) . . al' th return o a· more replaced radical hippie or fairy chic, sign mg e . .bl
f al h mosexuality It is possi e ender-normative expression o m e o . g " . . ty" of mainstream gay culture to trace the current homonormativi . . "
. b . " . ht-looking and stra1ght-actmg ), as (an emphasis on emg straig
h . d lack of meaningful connection to transgen-well as t e perceive h h' ft . s and lesbians, to t e s i s der communities among mainstream gay
of 1973.
Transvestite and Transsexual Liberation
. . nd transsexuals of either The oppression against transvestites a . . 'fi t d by
rises from sexist values and this oppression is mani es. e . sex a I /'ke in the form of explo1tat1on, homosexuals and heterosexua s a I d d the use of us
b t . rapes mur ers an ridicule, harassment, ea ings, . . , as shock troops and sacrificial v1ct1ms.
11 "sick " or "maladjusted" We reject all labels of "stereotype, ' d d f d non -transsexual sources an e y from non-transvestic an
continues
The Difficult Decades 121
any attempt to repress our manifestations as transvestites or transsexuals.
Trans Lib began in the summer of 1969 when Queens formed in New York and began militating for equal rights. In 1970 the Transvestite-Transsexual Action Organization (TACO) formed in Los Angeles, the Cockettes in San Francisco, Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) in New York, Fems Against Sex- ism and Transvestites and Transsexuals (TAT) also formed in New York. Radical Queens formed in Milwaukee-al/ in 1970. Queens became Queens Liberation Front.
Transvestism, transsexuality, and homosexuality are separate en- tities. Sexist values incorrectly classify any male who wears fem- inine attire as a homosexual, and to a lesser degree, any female who wears masculine attire is also classified as a homosexual.
We share in the oppression of Gay women. Trans Lib includes transvestites, transsexuals, and hermaphrodites of any sexual manifestation and of all sexes-heterosexuals, homosexual, bi- sexual, and asexual. It is becoming a separate movement as the great majority of transvestites are heterosexual, and many trans- sexuals (post-operative) are also heterosexual, and because· the oppression directed toward us is due to our transvestism and transsexualism and for no other reason. We unite around our op- pression, as all oppressed groups unite around their particular oppression. All power to Trans Liberation.
WE DEMAND
1. Abolition of all cross-dressing laws and restrictions of adornment.
2. An end to exploitation and discrimination within the gay world.
3. An end to exploitation practices of doctors and physi- cians in the fields of transvestism and transsexualism.
continues
122 TRANSGENDER HISTORY
Another marker of the growing divergence of trans a~d gay communities can be seen in the campaign to depatholog1~e ho- mosexuality, which was considered a psychological illness m the
S · · the 1950s, homo-United States until the early 1970s. tartmg m . d
h ·1 . h d worked with sympathetic straight or closete p 1 e groups a . d l" b f h . 1 al medical and psychiatric profess10ns to e 1st mem ers o t e eg ' ' . d S
· · ' D ·aunostzc an ta-. fi m the American Psychiatric Association s z o.. . 1t ro · f h fi t maJor tistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). One o t e rs
mplishments of the gay liberation movement that took sh~pe acco . . l al Build- in the wake of Stonewall was to achieve this ong-term go . .
. h i: ndation of homophile activism, gay psychologists mg on t e rou . h · who "came out" within their profession succeeded in havmg t eir
eers remove homosexuality from the DSM in 1973. As a result, P "liberated" from the burden of psycho-because gays were now pathology, gay and trans communities no longer had a common
. . ki to address how they were each treated by the mterest m wor ng
1he Difficult Decades 123
mental health establishment. Gay liberationists who had little fa-
miliarity with transgender issues came to see transgender people
as "not liberated" and lacking in political sophistication, as being
still mired in an old-fashioned "preliberation" engagement with the
establishment, as still· trying to fit in with the system when what
they should really be doing was freeing themselves fimm medical- psychiatric oppression.
In many respects, the transgender movement's politics toward the medical establishment were more like those
1
of the reproduc-
tive justice movement than those of the gay liberation movement.
Transgender people, like people seeking abortion or contraception,
wanted to secure access to competent, legal, respectfully provided
medical services for a non pathological need not· shared equal_ly by
every member of society, a need whose revelation carried a high
degree of stigma in some social contexts, and for which the decision
to seek medical intervention in a deeply personal matter about how
to live in one's own body was typically arrived at only after intense
and often emotionally painful deliberation. The US Supreme Court
ruled on the landmark Roe v. Wade case in 1973, guaranteeing a
woman's right to an abortion; transgender medical needs, however,
were not viewed through the same set of rationales that won Roe, in
large part because an emerging feminist position on transgender is-
sues proved even more hostile to transgender interests than the gay liberation perspective.
The second wave of feminist activism in the United States is
generally considered to have begun in the early 1960s, with the
publication of Betty Friedan's Feminine Mystique in 1963 and the
formation of the National Organization for Women (NOW) in
1966. Simone de Beauvoir's Second Sex, published in F ranee in
1949, had prepared the ground by placing the question of femi-
nism squarely at the forefront of post-World War II intellectual
life. Early second wave feminism quickly came to be seen by those
124 TRANSGENDER HISTORY
on the cultural and political left as white, middle class, heterosex-
ual, and establishment-oriented in its worldview, however, and
more radical, race-conscious, and countercultural versions of fem-
inism critiqued the feminist mainstream almost from the begin-
ning. In 1973, black feminists in New York, some of whom had
been involved in the civil rights movement, the Black Panthers, and
the Black Lesbian Caucus of the GLF, recognized the necessity of
forming a separate group, the National Black Feminist Organiza-
tion. Inspired by this activism, Boston-area black feminists formed
t,he Combahee River Collective the next year. The Combahee River
Collective Statement, crafted over the next few years, remains a
touchstone of black and intersectional feminism and provides an
important foundation for trans-inclusive feminist politics. Collec-
tive members noted that they felt "a great deal of criticism" of male
sexism and "loathed" that many men were socialized to be macho
and oppressive toward women, but they also stated: "We do not
have the misguided notion that it is their maleness per se-i.e.,
their biological maleness-that makes them what they are. As black
women, we find any kind of biological determinism a particularly
dangerous and reac,tionary basis on which to build a politic."
Such cautions notwithstanding, some strains of second wave
feminism developed a pronounced biologically determinist politic.
New Yorker Robin Morgan played an important role in launching
WITCH (Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell)
in 1968, a loose network of socialist-feminist collectives, and her
views would have a powerful influence on early white radical femi-
nist views of transgender issues. Many lesbians associated with gay
liberation began meeting in feminist consciousness-raising groups.
One of these groups, the Radicalesbians, which included Rita Mae
Brown, Karla Jay, and others, played a pivotal part in the political
development of lesbian feminism through its influential pamphlet,
"The Woman-Identified Woman."
l.
!
1he Difficult Decades 125
At the Second Congress to Unite Women, held in New York
in, 1970, the Radicalesbians and their paradigm-shifting pamphlet
burst onto the scene in response to recent pejorative comments by
Betty Friedan about the "lavender menace"-the question of les-
bi(~ participation in feminist politics. Friedan opposed associating lesbian concerns with feminism because she feared dpt society's
homophobia would limit feminism's appeal and hamp~r its prog- ress. The Radicalesbians staged what has come to be known as the
"Lavender Zap" when, just as the conference was about to begin,
they cut power to the microphones, killed the lights, and stormed
the stage. When the lights came back up and the microphones
came back on a few moments later, Radicalesbians members wear-
ing Lavender Menace T-shirts had commandeered the attention
of all present. They passed out copies of "The Woman-Identified
Woman" and facilitated a discussion of feminism, homophobia,
and lesbian-baiting that changed the direction of feminist politics in the United States.
"The Woman-Identified Woman" famously begins with the
statement, "A lesbian is the rage of all women condensed to the
point of explosion." Its major conceptual accomplishment was
to create linkages between straight and lesbian women through
a shared understanding of gender oppression-for all feminist
women, in other words, to be "woman-identified," to give strength
to; each other, rather than reflecting back to each other the "self-
hate and the lack of real self'' that were "rooted in our male-given
identity" as patriarchally defined women. The idea of women hav-
ing their primary emotional ties to each 'other, regardless of their
sexual orientation, rather than to men, was a major milestone in
the historical development of feminist consciousness, as was the
sense that gender roles were male-defined and functioned strictly
as a form of repression to keep women in a subordinate position relative to men.
126 TRANSGENDER HISTORY
As vital, however, as these moves were for nourishing an incip-
ient feminist sense of pride and strength, and however much they
cleared conceptual space for redefining and politicizing gender,
they nevertheless also precipitated a significant recontextualization
of some lesbian sexual subcultures, a development not necessarily
beneficial for all concerned. The traditional organization of lesbian
erotic life around "butch" and "femme" identities fell under suspi-
cion as examples of "male identification" and "patriarchal gender"
that pathetically imitated heterosexual male-female couplings and
that did not further the revolutionary goal of overthrowing gender
itself. As a result, butches, who expressed an unwelcome masculin-
ity, as well as femmes, who embraced a feminine gender presen-
tation deemed politically reactionary, were marginalized within a
lesbian feminist political community whose "androgynous" style
was seen as gender neutral.
One consequence of this shift away from "roles" and toward
androgyny in lesbian and feminist culture was the foreclosure of
social space that tolerated-or even celebrated-transmasculine
people (some of whom might now be characterized as transgen-
der), along with the women who loved them, who previously had
had a place in women's and lesbian communities. The erosion of
that space directly influenced the formation of FTM (female-to-
male) transgender communities by the middle years of the 1970s.
Before pursuing that story, however, it seems important to docu-
ment the emergence of new transphobic discourses based on gay
liberation and lesbian feminist analyses of gender. Most initially
addressed male-to-female transsexuals who were involved in femi-
nist communities, but, as the female-to-male community grew in
the 1980s and 1990s, older arguments were revised, expanded, and
adapted to take greater account of gender variance among people
assigned female at birth.
The Difficult Decades 127
Transsexual lesbian singer and activist Beth Elliott in the 1970s. (PHOTO CREDIT: RICHARD MCCAFFREY.)
As already noted, 1973 represented an inflection point in US trans-
gender political history. Trans people, when they transitioned
from one gender to another, still routinely faced loss of family
and friends, housing and employment discrimination, high lev-
els of social stigma, and greater risks for experiencing violence.
Long-standing antitransgender prejudices meshed with new levels
of medical attention to make pathologization the readiest path to
health care services and a better quality of life. Progressive politi-
cal movements, rather than critiquing the medical system that told
transgender people they were sick, instead insisted that transgender
people were politically regressive dupes of the patriarchal gender
system who, at best, deserved to have their consciousnesses raised.
A perfect storm of hostility toward transgender issues was begin- ning to gather force.
128 TRANSGENDER HISTORY
Some transgender people of the post-World War II Baby Boom
had been drawn to gay liberation, radical feminism, and New Left
politics, just like other members of their generation, but their wel~ come there tended to be short-lived. San Francisco's first Gay Pride
parade in 1972 (which commemorated the Compton's Cafeteria
riot along with Stonewall and welcomed drag participation) degen-
erated into fistfighting when the Reverend Raymond Broshears, one
of the gay male organizers, punched a member of a lesbian separatist
contingent that insisted on carrying signs that said "Off the Pricks!"
in violation of the parade's "no violence" policy. At the postparade
rally, feminists and some of their gay male supporters denounced
the fight as an example of stereotypical gender roles and patriarchal
oppression of women, and they announced that . they never again
would participate in a Gay Pride event organized by Broshears or
in one that permitted drag queens to "mock" women. In 1973, two
separate San Francisco Pride events were organized, one by Bro-
shears, and the other by gays and lesbians who opposed drag and
expressly forbid transgender people from participating. Broshears
never organized another Gay Pride event, while the anti-drag event
became the forerunner of the current San Francisco LGBTQ Pride
celebration. That same year, across the continent in New York,
event organizers tried to prevent Sylvia Rivera, the founder of Street
Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, from addressing the annual
commemoration of Christopher Street Liberation Day. Rivera took
the stage anyway and issued a .devastating critique of the cisgender
whiteness of the gay and feminist movements:
I've been trying to get up here all day. I have been to jail. I have
been raped and beaten many times, by men, heterosexual men. I
will no longer put up with this shit. I have had my nose broken.
I have lost my job. I have lost my apartment. For gay liberation.
And you all treat me this way? What the fuck's wrong with you?
The Difficult Decades
I believe in gay power. I believe in us getting our rights, or else I
would not be out there fighting for our rights. That's all I wanted
to say to you people. Come and see the people at ST AR House.
The people there are trying to do something for all of us, not [just]
men and women that belong to a white, middle-class club. And
that's what you all belong to. Revolution! Gay ~~ower!! (Edited from the original)
129
Another consequential incident in the rising tide of hostility
toward transgender people in the summer of 1973 was directed
against transsexual lesbian singer Beth Elliott, by Robin Morgan, at
the West Coast Lesbian Feminist Conference. Elliott discovered her
feminism, lesbianism, and womanhood in the context of a college
friendship in the late 1960s with a young woman who was also in
the process of coming out. After transitioning from man to woman
in her late teens, Elliott subsequently threw herself into community
activism by participating in the hippie folk music scene, becoming
an antiwar activist, and serving as vice president of the San Francisco
chapter of the pioneering lesbian organization the Daughters of Bil-
i tis. Her formative teenage relationship came back to haunt her in
the early 1970s, however, when her former college friend, by now
a member of the lesbian separatist Gutter Dykes Collective, pub-
licly accused Elliott of having sexually harassed her years earlier-a
charge Elliott vigorously and vehemently denied, but which, by the
very nature of things, could never be extricated from the circular
round of"she said/she said" accusations, denials, and counteraccusa-
tions. In retrospect, these accusations of harassment appear to be an
early instance-perhaps the first-of an emerging discourse in fem-
inism that held all male-to-female transsexuals ~o be, by definition, violators of women, because they represented an "unwanted pene-
tration" into women's space. Elliott, for her part, claims her former
friend made false accusations to save face within her separatist clique
130 TRANSGENDER HISTORY
once her adolescent friendship with Elliott became known. What-
ever the circumstances might have been, the public accusation of
sexual misconduct served as a lightning rod for discharging years of
gathering unease about the participation of transgender women in
lesbian and feminist spaces. It devastated Elliott, derailed her career
in the eai-ly women's movement and music scene, and became the
basis for one of the most pernicious and persistent characterizations
of transgender people to be found in feminism.
The fallout began in December 1972 when Elliott was ousted
from the Daughters of Bilitis, not because of any accusations
against her but on the grounds that she wasn't "really" a woman;
several other members resigned in protest over that decision. Mean-
while, Elliott also served on the organizing committee of the West
Coast Lesbian Feminist Conference,· planned for April of 1973 in
Los Angeles, and she had been asked to perform as a singer in the
conference's entertainment program. The Gutter Dykes leafleted
the conference to protest the presence there of a "man" (Elliott),
and keynote speaker Robin Morgan, recently arrived from the East
Coast, hastily expanded her address to incorporate elements of
the brewing controversy. All of her incorporations came from the
separatist perspective, and none from Elliott and her supporters.
Morgan's speech, titled "Lesbianism and Feminism: Synonyms or
Contradictions?" was subsequentlypublished in her memoir Go-
ing Too Far: The Personal Chronicle of a Feminist and was widely
reprinted in the feminist press. More than twelve hundred women
at the conference-which turned out to be the largest lesbian gath-
ering to date-listened to the speech firsthand. For many attendees,
the controversy over Beth Elliott's participation in the West Coast
Lesbian Feminist Conference was their first encounter with the
"transgender question," and what transpired there would inform
opinions nationwide.
The Difficult Decades 131
"All hell bro~e loose that very first night, caused by the gate-crashing pres~nce of a male transvestite who insisted that he was 1) an invited participant,. 2) really a woman, and 3) at heart a
lesbian," Morgan wrote in her introductory notes to the keynote
speech in Going Too Far. "It was incredible that so many strong an-
gry women should be divided by one smug male in griµny glasses
and an earth-mother gown." In the · 1973 speech itself, Morgan
asked her audience why some of them felt compelled to defend the
"obscenity of male transvestism" and to "permit into our organiza-
tions . . . men who deliberately reemphasize gender roles, and who
parody female oppression and suffering." "No," she continued, "I
will not call a male 'she'; thirty-two years of suffering in this andro-
centric society and of surviving, have earned me the title 'woman';
one walk down the street by a male transvestite, five minutes of his
being hassled (which he may enjoy), and then he dares, he dares to
think he understands our pain? No, in our mothers' names and in
our own, we must not call him sister."
Morgan then went on to identify Elliott as "the same man who
four years ago tried to pressure a San Francisco lesbian into letting
him rape her; the same man who single-handedly divided and al-
most destroyed the San Francisco Daughters of Bilitis Chapter."
She, accused Elliott of "leeching off women who have spent entire
lives as women in women's bodies" and ended her personal attack
by declaiming: "I charge him as an opportunist, an infiltrator, and
a destroyer-with the mentality of a rapist." Morgan then called
upon the conference attendees to vote on ejecting Elliott, saying,
"You can let him into your workshops-or you can deal with him."
According to writers for the Lesbian Tide, more than two-thirds of
those present voted to allow Elliott to remain, but the antitrans-
sexual faction refused to accept the popular results and promised to
disrupt the conference if their demands were not met. Eventually,
132 TRANSGENDER HISTORY
after much rancorous debate, Beth Elliott went on to perform but
thereafter left the remainder of the conference.
Conference attendees brought news of the Elliott controversy
(and, of course, much else) back to women's communities across
the country, and, throughout the middle years of the 1970s, the
"transsexual rapist" trope began to circulate in grassroots lesbian
networks as the most extreme version of an antipathy toward trans-
gender people rooted in the concepts of "woman identification" and
"women-only space." In 1977, for example, Sandy Stone, a male-
to-female transsexual recording engineer who had worked with Jimi
Hendrix and other rock luminaries before joining the Olivia Re-
cords collective to help launch the women's music industry, became
the target of an antitranssexual campaign among some women who
threatened to boycott Olivia if Stone did not resign. They argued
that consumers were being deceived in the claim that Olivia was
"women-only." Although the collective was willing on principle to
stick by Stone, she voluntarily left to pursue other opportunities in
order not to damage Olivia's business. By 1978, Boston University
feminist theologian Mary Daly had elevated transphobia to a meta- physical precept by labeling transsexuality a "necrophilic invasion"
of vital women's space in the section of her book, Gyn/Ecology, called "Boundary Violation and the Frankenstein Phenomenon."
But it was Daly's doctoral student, Janice G. Raymond, who, in
1979, consolidated the many strands of antitransgender discourse
circulating within feminist communities into one grand narrative,
published as The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male. Because Raymond's book has played such an important role
in transgender political history-serving both as a sourcebook
for antitransgender opinion as well as a goad for transgender
countertheorizing-it merits discussion here at some length. As the
debates about transgender issues shifted during the 1990s and the
2000s, Raymond's attitudes-never representative of all feminist
The Difficult Decades 133
op;nion-have been caricatured and derided by people friendly to
transgender concerns, while those hostile to transgender interests
hold her work up as a sound argument in their favor. Because what
she actually wrote has been obscured by the heated arguments of
others, and because her own arguments continue to be referenced
in contemporary feminist debates, it seems useful to discuss Ray- mond extensively. · -
First, Raymond explicitly identifies the practice of transsexual-
ity with rape, unequivocally stating: "All transsexuals rape women's
bodies by reducing the real female form to an artifact, appropriat-
ing this body for themselves;" she asserts that the mere presence
of male-to-female transsexuals in women's space "violates women's
sexuality and spirit." Rape, she claims, is usually accomplished by
force, but it can also be accomplished by deception; male-to-female
transsexuals who seek to be involved in women's and feminist
communities "merely cut off the most obvious means of invading
women," but they continue to rape women, as she claims Sandy
Stone did via her work at Olivia, whenever they do not declare themselves to be transsexuals.
Furthermore, Raymond claims that male-to-female transsexu-
als are agents of the patriarchal oppression of women, comparing
them to the eunuchs (castrated males) who once guarded the ha-
rems of Eastern potentates. "Will the acceptance of transsexually
constructed lesbian-feminists who have lost only the outward ap-
pendages of their physical masculinity lead to the containment and
control of lesbian-feminists?" Raymond asks. "Will every lesbian-
feminist space become a harem?" Just because some "men" are cas-
trated doesn't make them "un-men, '' she continues; it just means
they can be used as '"keepers' of woman-identified women when
the 'real men,' the 'rulers of patriarchy,' decide that the women's
movement . . . should be controlled and contained." In this way,
she claims, eunuchs, too, "can rise in the Kingdoms of the Fathers."
134 TRANSGENDER HISTORY
· h hinly veiled Islamopho-combining Orientalist stereotypes wit a t 1 f l' pow- al as a too o a ien b . Raymond thus constructs the transsexu . .
1a, . W tern femm1sm. ers bent on the subjuglati'odn onfdp;:g~::~y1v~nco~erent sections of The
o f the more uri a . " ne o . . "Learnin from the Nazi Experience.
Transsexual Empire Is called g d · " 1 't is not
. " Raymon writes, "In mentioning the Nazi experiments, al to what went
d . 1 mpare transsexu surgery my purpose to irect y co h h f what went . m s but rather to demonstrate t at muc o . "
on m the ca p . . the ethics of transsexualism. on there can be of value m surveymg . £ d anal~
. f fal. llogisms mrerences, an She then constructs a stnng o se sy . . ~ N . m without ac-
k iate transsexual1ty wit az1s ogies that wor to assoc N . r Nazi collaborators.
h uals are az1s o tually asserting t at transsex . . uru Thomas Szasz Raymond quotes countercultural antipsych1atry g h 11 b ·_
fi h doctors ave co a o the effect that sometimes pro t- ungry . to . i'n ways that seem to v1-t nd corporations . rated with governmen s a " d h " and then she
. fi . nal. ethics to first o no arm, olate their pro essw fu d d "Not so inciden-
. · government n e · notes that N az1 science was h h been funded
. t "some transsexual researc as all " she pmnts ou , . h t y, d d cted experiments sue " N i octors con u by government grants. az d Aryans to gain racial
m arin the skulls of Aryans an non- as co P g . h 1970s experimented on trans- kn 1 d hereas doctors . m t e
ow e ge, w h h . . "possible to construct a func- b d . 1 w et er 1t was
sexual o ies to earn . al knowledge· therefore, al b d " to gam sexu '
tional vagina in am e o y . . . h transsexual con- d 1 . "What we are w1tnessmg mt e
Raymon c aims, . f . hal ideology of sex-role con- . h service o patriarc
text is a science at t e d' .£ bl nd hair and blue eyes h that bree mg ior o
formity in t e same way . f Nordic racial confor- all d · at the service o
became a so-c . e sc1dence'th a series of associations bearing little 'ty" The section en s w1 h
mi . h . h Nazis were Germans; t e logical relationship to one anot er. t e . surgery was a
d £ sex convers10n fi t h sician on recor to penorm a rs P y h k d at Hirschfeld' s institute in Germany; Harry G an w o wore · erm . . d the Hirschfeld institute many times Benjamin, a German, v1s1te
The Difficult Decades 135
in the 1920s; the institute' s confidential files reputedly held com-
promising information on prominent homosexual or cross-dressing
Nazis; and Nazis conducted medical experiments in the concentra-:-
tion camps that sometimes involved castration and hormone treat-
ments aimed at "curing" homosexuality. Therefore? Transsexuality has something to do with Nazism.
Raymond, who has just spent so many words condemning eu-
genic arguments, begins the "Suggestions for Change" appended
to her book with the statement: "I contend that the problem of
transsexualism would best be served by morally mandating it our
of existence." She does not want to actually outlaw transsexual sur-
geries bur rather to control and limit access to them (the way one
would regulate methadone access to heroin addicts).and to promote
legislation against sex-role stereotyping, "where it would be possible
for the law to step in at the beginning of a destructive sexist process
that leads ultimately to consequences such as transsexualism." In
The Transsexual Empire and related presentations shortly after its
publication, Raymond further recommended gender reorientation
for transsexuals by means of feminist consciousness-raising therapy,
which would explore "the social origins of the transsexual problem
and the consequences of the medical-technical solution," and pub-
lic education campaigns in which ex-transsexuals would speak of
their dissatisfactions with changing sex, and in which former pro-
viders of medical services to transsexuals would discuss why they decided to stop providing services.
Transgender community members have asked since the 1970s
how anyone could fail to see that Raymond's rhetoric and policy
recommendations replicate arguments made by ex-gay ministries,
religious fundamentalists, antiabortion activists, and bigots of many
stripes. In spite of these protestations, antitransgender discourses continued to proliferate in the 1980s, when it became common to
denounce transsexuality as a "mutilating" practice and, if anything,
136 TRANSGENDER HISTORY
. . . f nomic classes requires the re- Just as to assure e/1mmat1on o el co . t) and their seizure of
d I (the pro etana · · · volt of the un ere ass the elimination of sexual
f d cf n so to assure the means o pro u io ' d /ass (women) and the sei- classes requires the revolt of.the un :c d 1·ust as the end goal of
f t I of reproduction. · · · n . zure o con ro . I the elimination of the economic socialist revolution was not on y . /ass distinction itself, so the
• ·1 b t of the economic c class pnv1 ege u . t b unlike that of the first end goal of feminist rev~/~t:~: :,i~ina:~n of male privilege but feminist movement, not ;us h duct1·on of the species
. . . ·t If T e repro of the sex d1stmet1on ' s~ . f b~th would be replaced by (at /east by one sex for the benefit o d f . children would be born to the option of) artificial repro uc ion. . both sexes equally, or independently of either.
th Elliott's participation at the West In the controversy about Be L b. Tide publisher Jeanne
Coast Lesbian Feminist Conference~ es ':~der prejudice and other Cordova drew parallels between a~t1tranhsg ophobia and racism. She
. · · f ch as sexism, om ' forms of d1scn~1~a ion su nd Freda Smith of Sacramento "stepped and lesbian act1v1st the Revere k "loud and strong in
d f C dy Coleman, to spea up," in the wor s o an ho identified herself as a "Gaysis- defense of Beth Elliott." Colema~, w whom she considered "right-on" ter," deplored the attac~s o.n Elliott, ther women and Gaysisters, and of whom she said, I, like so many o
am proud to call her sister."
continues
The Difficult Decades 137
Psychologist Deborah FeinbJoom and her colleagues in Boston wrote
an article for the Journal of Homosexuality, "Lesbian/Feminist Orienta- tion among Male-to-Female Transsexuals," in which they interviewed transgender women involved in lesbian feminism and found them to be
not significantly different from cisgender women in their political beliefs, activist philosophies, and gender ideology.
In the controversy about Sandy Stone's involvement with the all- women Olivia Records collective, C. Tami Weyant wrote to the feminist publication Sister and asserted that asking both MTF and FTM trans- sexuals to struggle against male privilege "as part of their feminist con-
sciousness" was "fair," but that "rejecting them as transsexuals, period,
will make us part of the oppression .... I strongly believe," she noted, "that only feminism can offer them safe harbor from that oppression, and that the shared issues they have struggled with demand that we struggle to accept all transsexuals who desire to be feminist."
As the foregoing statements suggest, there was nothing monolithic about second wave feminist attitudes toward trans issues. The feminist
second wave simultaneously espoused some of the most reactionary at- titudes toward trans people to be found anywhere while also offering a
vision of transgender inclusion in progressive feminist movements for social change.
the level of vitriol directed against transgender people actually in-
creased. A 1986 letter to the editor published in the San Francisco
lesbian newspaper Coming Up captures the vehemence with which transsexuals could be publicly vilified:
One cannot change one's gender. W'hat occurs is a cleverly ma-
nipulated exterior: what has been done is mutation. W'hat exists
beneath the deformed surface is the same person who was there
prior to the deformity. People who break or deform their bodies
[act] our the sick farce of a deluded, patriarchal approach to na-
ture, alienated from true being. . . . W'hen an estrogenated man
with breasts loves women, that is not lesbianism, that is mutilated
138 TRANSGENDER HISTORY
. [S h an individual] is not a threat to the lesbian com-pervers1on. uc
munity, he is an outrage to us. He is not a lesbian, he is a mutant
lf d freak a deformity, an insult. He deserves a slap man, a se :-ma e ' . . in the face. After that, he deserves to have his body and his mmd
made well again.
Raymond herself has remained completely convinced of t~e cor-
f h . . When 1he Transsexual Empire was reissued rectness o er posmon. d in 1994, with a "New Introduction on Transgen.der," Ray~on reasserted her key points that "transsexualism constitutes a_soc10po-
litical program that is undercutting the movement to e,~adic~te sex- . d . " that transsexuals are so alienated role stereotyping an oppression, . "
from their bodies that they think little of mutilating t~em, and 1 b s of the soCial genders that accepting transsexual peop e as mem er .
d . d to be by others amounts to collus10n they live in an are perceive . . f al. " When transgender people accuse with a "falsification o re ity.
some feminists of transph~bia, it is to attitudes and statements such
as these that they refer.
GID and HIV
d . 1 · ated in the creation Medical attention to transgen er issues cu mm . . of a new category of psychopathology, Gender Identi~ Disorder (GID), which was first listed in the fourth revised edi_u~n of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statis~ical Man-
l D . . J • 1980-the first editio. n published after ual of Menta isoraers m d h ality The move to-the 1973 version that had remove omosexu . . .
h d b many years earlier with ward creating this new category a egun
k f H B . mi· n In 1966 after the publication of 1he the wor o arry enJa · ' Transsexual Phenomenon, Benjamin's friends and c~lleagues had
. d HBIGDA-the Harry Benjamin International Gender organize . . . . . HBIGDA became the main orgamzat10n Dysphona Associat10n.
The Difficult Decades 139
for medical, legal, and psychotherapeutic professionals who worked
with transgender populations, and its membership consisted pri-
marily of the surgeons, endocrinologists, psychiatrists, and lawyers
affiliated with the big university-based programs that provided
transgender health care and conducted research into· gender iden-
tity formation. By the later 1970s, a decade of resear~h had pro- duced a set of treatment protocols for transgender patients, called
the "Standards of Care," as well as a set of diagnostic criteria, which became formalized as GID.
GID was very controversial within transgender communities.
Most people with transgender feelings resented having their sense
of gender labeled as a sickness and their identities classified as dis-
ordered; others took great comfort from believing they had a med-
ical condition that could be cured with proper treatment. Until
recently, people who have wanted to use hormones and surgery to
change their appearance, and to gain access to changing state-issued
IDs andlegal gender, have had to be diagnosed with GID and abide
by the Standards of Care. This has required a psychological evalu-
ation and a period of living in the desired gender role before access
has been granted for medically regulated treatments, which then
enabled a legal change in gender status. Some transgender people
have questioned why gender change needed to be medicalized in
the first place, while others have argued that they should have access
to health care services without having their need to do so be con-
sidered pathological. In spite of it being recognized by psychomed-
ical professionals as a legitimate and diagnosable psychopathology,
treatments for GID were not covered by health plans in the United
States because they were considered "elective," "cosmetic," or even
"experimental." This was a truly inexcusable double bind-if GID
was a real psychopathology, its treatment should have been insur-
able as a legitimate health care need; if treating it was not consid-
ered medically necessary, it should not have been listed as a disease.
140 TRANSGENDER HISTORY
With the "problem" of transsexuality seemingly solved and con-
tained within the new diagnostic category, several of the university-
based programs-notably the one at Johns Hopkins-closed down,
and those at several other universities-such as Stanford-spun
off into privately run clinics operated by doctors affiliated with the
universities' medical schools. Responsibility for ensuring that pro-
fessional standards of care were being met devolved onto a second
tier of psychotherapists in private practice who were members of
HBIGDA. Thus, by 1980, a routine set of procedures and proto-
cols for medically managing transgender populations had fallen
into place. Transgender access to government-funded social ser-
vices, which had been more readily available during the Democratic
administrations of Johnson and Carter, were drastically curtailed
under Nixon and Reagan, in part, it seems, in the latter case, in
response to antitransgender feminist arguments that dovetailed
with conservative politics. When antipornography feminists in this
period, such as Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, al-
lied themselves with conservative government policies in order to
criminalize pornography (which they considered violence against
women), Janice Raymond hammered home the connections with
transgender issues by suggesting that the "same socialization that
enables men to objectify women in rape, pornography, and 'drag'
enables them to objectify their own bodies," treating a penis a thing
to "get rid of' and a vagina as something to acquire. In briefly tracing the history of the emergence of GID, it is possi-
ble to see how the social power of science shifted, during the course
of a few years in the 1970s, from a concern with sexual orientation
to a preoccupation with gender identity. To a certain degree, the ef-
fectiveness of gay liberation and the successes of lesbian and gay civil
rights activism had made it politically impossible for responsible
medical professionals to continue treating homosexuality as a men-
tal illness. At the same time, the success of feminism in destabilizing
The Difficult Decades 141
conventional means of social control over , . gender-rather than s al" . womens bodies made
b exu tty-mto an ev ·
attleground. The inte "fi d . en more important social ns1 e interest of d. al .
to understand, engineer, and "fix" e m~ le science in trying be seen, in part as an g nder m these years needs to
' attempt to stuff th £ · · its bottle. The result £ e emm1st genie back into . , or transgender peo le ~.
non. All across the p 1· . al p , was a lose-lose situa- . o tt1c spectrum fro .
s1ve and all points in betw h , m reacttonary to progres- een, t e only ·
were to be considered b d . k opttons presented to them
d a , sic , or wrong C
er communities b . . onsequently, transgen- . ecame very inwardly focused b h
tended to concentrate m . . y t e 1980s. They ore on prov1dmg m al "d
their members than on b d . utu at and support to 0 roa er social activism
n top of this dismal situation a deva . . transgender comm . . , stating new threat to . unmes appeared in 1981 th 1festation of the AIDS . - e first visible man-
1 . pandemic. Transgend l
re ied on sex work £ . al er popu ations that or surv1v , that shar d d
hormones, or that part" . d . e nee les for injecting 1c1pate m the a al
where the epidemic fir t . d . g y m e sexual subcultures s game w1despre d ·
States were especially hard h" p a attent10n in the United
b It. oor access to h al h
ecause of poverty . e t care services . , stigma, and social isol .
t10nal barriers to access creat db h i: anon, as well as addi-
h e y t e rear man t d
ave of disclosing th . y ransgen er people eu transgender sta h
ers (which could potential! tus to ealth care provid-
h y reexpose them to . al vul
t ey had worked hard t soc1 nerabilities o overcome) 0 l d
problem. As a result tran d , n y serve to compound the . ' sgen er people "all ican trans women- Ir -espec1 y African Amer-
now suuer one of th h. h rates in the world. e ig est HIV infection
FTM Communities
The shifts in lesbian and £ · . " . emm1st gender ideol h woman identification" and . ogy t at focused on
provided the conceptual und . . erpmnmgs
142 TRANSGENDER HISTORY
for some women to engage in transphobic attacks also encouraged
some former butches and femmes to maintain the erotic dynamics of
their relationships by· leaving the homosexual subcultures they had
once considered home and to blend into the dominant heteronor-
mative population once the former butch had transitioned to life as
a man. This is not to suggest that trans men would be lesbians given
the opportunity but rather to point out that as one possible way
of life for transmasculine people was becoming less available, other
possibilities were expanding. These changes in the cultural landscape
unavoidably affected the life paths that many gender-questioning
people followed. It's also important to note that not all trans men
have a lesbian history and that many people assigned female at birth
who were oriented toward men also found their way into, female-
to-male communities in increasing numbers by the mid-1970s, and
they sometimes embraced gay male identities as they continued to
be involved with men after transitioning. Jude Patton, with the Re-
naissance group in Los Angeles, and Rupert Raj of Toronto, with
his Metamorphosis magazine, provided support for hundreds of trans
men in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1977, their fellow trans activist
Mario Martino's memoir Emergence became the first full-length
autobiography of a trans man to be published in the United States.
One of the first media pieces to draw attention to civil injustices
encountered by trans men-and a key moment in the politicization
of a US FTM community....,...-involved Steve Dain, an award-win-
ning former high school physical education teacher in Emeryville,
California. In 197 6, Dain had informed his principal thathe would
be transitioning genders during the school's summer vacation, and
he asked to be reassigned to teach science rather than girls' gym.
The request was granted, but because of a change in the school's
administration, a new vice principal was unaware of Dain' s plan.
During the first day of classes, the administrator panicked when he
learned that the new science teacher was none other than the old
1he Difficult Decades 143
PE teacher c, and h h d D . ;' e a am arrested in his cl . of his students-£or "d" . b" h assroom-m front
' 1stur mg t e p " D . . the Emeryville school d" . . L eace. am successfully sued
istnct ror a large b t d. l subsequently left teach· u un isc osed sum and
mg to pursue a caree h · became a highly visibl k r as a c iropractor. He
e spo esperson for FTM . the 1985 HBO d . issues, appearing in
ocumentary What Sex A J? d . . counselor for many gende . . m . an ~ervmg as a lay
One of D . ' .. r-:uest10nmg transmasculine people. am s most significant prot, ,
became the hub f h . eges was Lou Sullivan, who o t e organized FTM commu . . .
States in the 1980s B . 1
nity m the United . orn m 951, Sullivan started k . .
nal as a ten-year-old gi"rl g . . eepmg a Jour- rowmg up m th M"l k
continued J. ournaling l l . e 1 wau ee suburbs and regu ar y until a few d b £ .
death at age thirty-nine in 1991 I h" . ays e ore his untimely ' · n is Journal S 11" d
his early ch"ldh d h ' u 1Van escribed 1 oo t oughts of bein a ho h. .
cent sexual fantasies of b . g y, is confusmg adoles- emg a gay man a d h.
tion in Milwaukee' l ' n is teenage participa- s countercu tural scene H d
novels and dreamed of r . . . e rea John Rechy' s unnmg away to l" . . h h
Los Angeles. By the tim· h d ive wit t e drag queens of e e gra uated hi h h l h
in men's clothes and . . g sc oo' e was dressing was active m the Gay Peo l , U .
at the University ofW" . . Pe s nion (GPU) isconsm, Milwaukee wh h £
a secretary in the Sla . L ' ere e ound a job as B 1 . vie anguages department.
y 973, Sullivan self-identified "L al as a rem e tran . ,, h was sexually attracted to db" svest1te w o
gay an isexual men That sam launched a career of tran d . e year, he . sgen er community . . . lication of "A T . acttv1sm wtth the pub-
ransvesttte Answers a Femi . " peared in the GPU M . . nist, an article that ap-
ews, m which he reco d h. with a coworker who .. al f . unte is conversations
was cnttc o his masc l" 1 argument Sullivan l "d h u me sty e of dress. The
at out-t at all pe l of themselves to oth b . ope represent their sense
ers y means of certain . bl conventions, and that trans d _recogniza e gender feminine identities ar gen er representat10ns of masculine or
e no more or no less "stereoty . al" h of anyone else-ant" . d
1 . pie t an those
IC1pate a me of thinking that became well
144 TRANSGENDER HISTORY
Lou Sullivan's journals constitute one of the most complete, and one of
the most compelling, accounts of a transgender life ever set to page.
These excerpts, from ages eleven to twenty-two, chart the trajectory of
his emerging gay male identity.
When we got home, we played boys. -JANUARY 6, 1963, AGE ELEVEN
My problem is that I can't accept life for what it is, like it's pre- sented to me. I feel that there is something deep and wonderful underneath it that no one has found.
-DECEMBER 12, 1965, AGE FOURTEEN
No one looks deeper than the flesh. -FEBRUARY 22, 1966, AGE FOURTEEN
I want to look like what I am but don't know what someone like me looks like. I mean, when people look at me I want them to think, there's one of those people ... that has their own interpre- tation of happiness. That's what I am.
-JUNE 6, 1966, AGE FIFTEEN
My heart and soul is with the drag queens. This last week or so I've wanted to go and leave everything and join that world. But where do I fit in? I feel so deprived and sad and lost. What can become of a girl whose real desire and passion is with male ho- mosexuals? That I want to be one? I still yearn for that world, that world I know nothing about, a serious, threatening, sad, ferocious stormy, lost world.
-NOVEMBER 22, 1970, AGE NINETEEN
I know now that I can get exactly what I want-to fantasize is no longer enough. Before it was beyond my dreams. It was the worst perversion that I wished I had a penis, to fuck a boy, to be on top and inside! But now it's only a matter of time.
-DECEMBER 11, 1973, AGE TWENTY-TWO
The Difficult Decades 145
established in transgender community discourses in decades
ahead. Another article, "Looking Towards Transvestite Liberation "
published in the GPU News in 1974, was widely reprinted in t~e gay and lesbian press. Sullivan continued to contribute reviews and
articles to the GPU News through 1980, many of historical vignettes of people assigned female at who 1·
1ves as ~en. ~n doing so, Sullivan became an important community-based historian of FTM experience.
Sullivan come to self-identify as a female-to-male transsexual
~y 197 5, and he moved to San F randsco to seek a medically as- sisted gender transition at the Stanford University gender dysphoria
program. He found work, as a woman, as a secretary for the Wilson
Sporting Goods Company, but he spent most of his nonworking
hours dressed as a young man, cruising the Castro neighborhood's gay enclave for anonymous sex
with men. In 1976, Sullivan
was rejected by the Stanford
program on the basis of his
openly declared gay male iden-
tity, and he spent the next four
years continuing to live as a
woman. During these years, in
which he tried to make peace
with his female embodiment,
he participated in feminist
consciousness-raising sessions
(which he admits helped him
work through some inter-
nalized misogyny but never
caused him to waver in his gay
male identity), learned to re-
pair cars in an effort to combat
Lou Sullivan, the leading organizer of the female-to-male (FTM) community in the 1980s. (PHOTO CREDIT: MARIETTE PATHY ALLEN.)
146 TRANSGENDER HISTORY
limiting female stereotypes, and became active in San Francisco
Bay Area MTF cross-dresser groups, where he worked to develop
peer support for female-to-male individuals. Sullivan had read and
been inspired by the 1976 newspaper coverage of Steve Dain's trib-
ulations, but he first had a chance to meet his hero in 1979, after
meeting a psychotherapist at a cross-dresser support organization
who happened to know Dain. Steve Dain offered Sullivan important validation and encour-
aged him to pursµe transitioning if it was what he really wanted to
do. By 1979, as noted earlier, the framework for transgender med-
ical services was shifting away from university-based research pro-
grams and becoming considerably more decentralized. As a result,
Sullivan was able to find psychotherapists, endocrinologists, and
surgeons in private practice who were not concerned with his iden-
tification as a gay man and who were willing to help him transition.
Sullivan started hormones in 1979, had chest surgery in 1980, and
thereafter starting living full-time as a man. At this point, he threw
himself even more fully into transgender community activism. He
volunteered as the first FTM peer counselor at the Janus Informa-
tion Facility, a private organization that took over the Erickson
Educational Foundation's transgender information and referral ac-
tivities after the NTCU folded (and which had changed its name
to the Transsexual Counseling Service shortly before it went out of
business). As a result, Sullivan found himself in contact with a mul-
titude of gender-questioning people who had been assigned female
at birth.' Sullivan simultaneously redoubled his efforts as a commu-
nity-based historian. He' gathered the vignettes he had published
through the years in the GPU News and incorporated them into the
guidebook he developed based on his work at Janus, Information far
the Female-to-Male Cross-Dresser and Transsexual, which remained
the go-to self-help book for trans men well into the 1990s. In 1986,
1he Difficult Decades 147
Sullivan became a fo d' un mg member ( d I Gay and Lesbian Historical S . ( an news etter editor) of the
ciety), whose archives com ~ciety now the GLBT Historical So- pnse one of th b II .
terial on gay lesbi b' al e est co ectlons of ma- ' an, tsexu ' and tran d h.
in the world. As a result of S 11· ' sgen er tstory anywhere . . , u 1van s early in I
mzauon s transgender h Id' . vo vement, the orga- o mgs are part1c l I . h
started work on a b k I h . u ar y nc . Syllivan also 00 - engt biogra h f J k ·-
nineteenth-century S F . P Y 0
ac B. Garland, the an · ranc1scan also kno
had been born female b h 1· wn as Babe Bean, who
S I . ut w o tved as a man . h T
u hvan noted that G I d . . m t e enderloin. ar an erot1c1zed h · I ·
young men he met in the T d I . is re auonships with the
b en er om and th t h h I d
y offering food, shelter d 'ft f a e e pe them out ' an gt s o mone S .
his own trans-gay ident'ty . h' b y. eemg antecedents to 1 ' m ts ook bl. h d
van argued that contr h ' pu ts e in 1991, Sulli- c ary to t e then-prevaili . d reminist scholarship G I d d'd ng w1s om in gay and
' ar an 1 not live as conventional limitatio f a man to escape the . ns o womanhood b h identification as a man d h' h ut rat er because of his
an 1s ·omo · In 1986 while S 11· erotic attraction to other men
' u 1van was w ki · chives in San Francisc h al or ng to establish the GLBT ar-
o, e so organi d h support and education . . . ze t e second FTM-only
orgamzat10n m th U . d simply "FTM " h . . e mte States. Called
' . t e orgamzauon held month! " featuring educational Y FTM Gatherings"
programs and opp · · also published the FTM -,.., ortumt1es to socialize and
I 1 vewsletter which . kl b
eading source of inti . . , qmc y ecame the ormat10n m the nation £ £
sues. Because of Sulliv , I d . or emale-to-male is- an s ea ersh1p role and h' .
the San Francisco FTM al ts own gay identity,
b group ways attracted all .
mem ership and a 'd d · a sexu Y diverse vo1 e many of the d. . .
tion that had plagued . ·1 . MT 1v1s10ns over sexual orienta- s1m1 ar p 0 . .
This openness was reflected . h rgamzauons since the 1960s.
helped shape group sensib ·1·1~ t .e newsletter's editorial slant and h
t ltles m the com . f t at started blossomin . h mumty o trans men
gm t e 1980s with S 11· ' organization Sullivan founded b u tvan s support. The
ecame FTM International, now
148 TRANSGENDER HISTORY
the oldest continuing FTM group in the world. The San Francisco
chapter became known as the Lou Sullivan Society, which is now
an independent web-based resource for trans men in the Bay Area. ~. Lou Sullivan's life was cut tragically short by an opportunistic
illness contracted as a result of HIV infection. Lou did not live up
to the promiscuous stereotype of a gay man in San Francisco in the
1980s, but he did visit gay sex clubs after having his chest surgery
in 1980, and in 1985-in an experimental phase-he dated trans
women who supported themselves through commercial sex work
at a Tenderloin bar called the Black Rose; other than those brief
episodes of sexual adventurousness, Sullivan could count his long-
term sex partners on one hand. Whenever and however it was that
Lou became infected, he remained asymptomatic until 1986, when
complications fro~ the genital surgery he had finally decided to pursue stressed his immune system. In the course of his postsurgical
recovery, Sullivan developed Pneumocystis jiroveci pneumonia (for-
merly known as Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, PCP), an espe-
cially virulent form of pneumonia closely associated with AIDS. At
the time his diagnosis was confirmed, survival rates for people with
AIDS averaged somewhere in the vicinity of two years, Sullivan sur-
vived for five, in reasonably good health until the very end. In his
final years he participated in AIDS drug trials, ·finished his book
on Jack Garland, and continued to nurture the FTM group and
the Historical Society. Sullivan's final campaign, however, was to
persuade HBIGDA members and the committee revising the defi-
nition of GID for the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual to drop "homosexual orientation" as a contraindication in
the diagnostic criteria, which was based on the assumption that ho-
mosexual transgender people did not exist. Sullivan did not live to
see that change take place in 1994, but he took comfort in knowing
that his efforts were contributing to a revision of the sexological
literature.
1he Difficult Decades 149
In one of his journal entries after his AIDS d' . d b 1agnos1s, Lou muse a out writing to the staff of the Stanford gender dysph . program to say, "You told me I couldn't live as b ona I . , a gay man, ut now
amd go1~g to die like one." He left this life surrounded by friend an family on M h 6 199 . s h' arc ' 1, JUst as a new phase of transgender
tstory was beginning to erupt.
