The Reinvention of Gender

by Enny Viar

  

One of the most misunderstood movements of the twentieth century is probably that of those who do not fit into the normal male-female heterosexual behavior model that most of us are taught growing up. If you're born a boy, you become a man and marry a woman, and so on. However, as society has shown since the dawn of time, there are exceptions to this rule. Some can understand the idea of homosexual behavior, writing it off as experimentation at best or condemning it as sin at its worst, but at its core, homosexuality revolves around the physical act of sex and the emotional feeling of love. There is no fundamental change about the person other than who they choose to love or sleep with. But what about those who feel they do fit into the normal heterosexual model, but feel they are on the wrong side of that dichotomy? And how about those who are somewhere in between?

At the dawn of the 20th century, a German scientist named Magnus Hirschfield began a most unusual study. He was interested in a small group of people, those who wore clothing typically identified with the opposite gender, as well as some who believed they were born the wrong sex. He assembled a group of surgeons and started up a very controversial clinic. Calling it the "Institute for Sexual Science", he began to work with and systematically describe these people. He first coined the term transvestite in 1917 to describe those who enjoyed wearing the clothing of the opposite gender. He also studied those people who wanted to actually physically change their bodies to conform with their mental idea of gender. He would eventually called these people transsexuals.

Hirschfield was an openly gay Jewish person, so eventually he had to flee Germany when the Nazis rose to power, but his ideas had already moved around Europe and into America. A colleague of Dr. Hirschfield, Dr. Harry Benjamin, was also interested in this new paradigm of gender and continued Dr. Hirschfield's work. He moved to the United States and began work as an endocrinologist. Perhaps his most famous client was a young ex-GI named George Jorgensen. George, like many of Hirschfield's former clients, believed that he was born into the wrong body, and was sent to Dr Benjamin for assistance. In 1952, through various means, including hormone therapy and surgery, George became Christine, the first public transsexual in the history of the United States. Arriving home from her surgery in Scandinavia, Christine, wrapped in a mink coat, proclaimed "I'm happy to be home -- what American woman wouldn't be?"

Christine Jorgensen may have been the first to publicly admit to her transsexuality, but she would be far from the last. When the 1960's began, a considerable percentage of Dr. Benjamin's patients were transsexuals. In 1966, he wrote a book entitled The Transsexual Phenomenon, in which he defined transsexuality as a "syndrome", and laid out what became known later as the "Standards of Care", or steps that someone questioning their gender identity must follow in order to change gender.

Dr. Benjamin was not the only person in America interested in transsexuals. Also in 1966, the John Hopkins University opened the first 'Gender Identity Clinic' in the United States. Psychologist John Money ran this clinic, which had even stricter guidelines for transsexuals than Dr Benjamin had. Dr. Money, with the help of Psychiatrist Richard Green, also published a book entitled "Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment", which took an approach to the treatment of gender disorders which incorporated both psychological and medical methods.

By the end of the 60's transsexuals were old news. Besides Christine Jorgensen, there was also April Ashley, born George Jamieson, who was a socialite and model in London. In the late 1960's, she had managed to marry an aristocrat, Lord Arthur Rowallan. Their bitter divorce resulted in a court ruling that would prevent transsexuals from marrying for over thirty years in the UK. Pop artist Andy Warhol's "Factory" ensemble employed no less than three "drag queens", one of which would later die from the side effects of hormone treatment.

Many other events from the 1960's were often targeted specifically at transsexuals, but oftentimes others got caught in the crossfire. In 1968, the Olympic committee began genetic testing on all female athletes, automatically disqualifying any who didn't fall under the typical female XY pattern. While they did this to promote fairness among the female athletes, many of those disqualified were not transsexuals, but had atypical gene types. Some of these women that were disqualified were even fertile as women, several of which had even borne children.

On June 27th, 1969, a transsexual woman by the name of Sylvia Rivera got fed up with the harassment of gays and "queens" by the police, and threw a bottle at a group of New York City officers who were raiding a gay bar called the Stonewall. This was the beginning of the famous "Stonewall Riots", which lasted for several days and started a movement to decriminalize homosexuality, and eventually push for the equal treatment of homosexuals in society. The sad thing about this is that the transgendered community has been excluded from much of this reform, and this transgender-bias still permeates the gay community today.

The seventies brought more difficulties for transsexuals. In 1977, professional tennis player Renee Richards was disqualified for her transsexuality. In 1979, author Janice Raymond published The Transsexual Empire, which claimed that transsexualism was a conspiracy designed to get rid of women. She also campaigned to make sex-change operations illegal. She was unsuccessful, but her book did cause others to look at their policies. John Meyer of the John Hopkins University published an article in the Journal of General Psychiatry which claimed that sexual reassignment surgery was unnecessary. Soon afterward, the Gender Identity Clinic at John Hopkins was closed.

There were some bright spots for transsexuals in the 1970's, though. Dr. Benjamin first made public his "Standards of Care", which are still in place today (although some view them as too restrictive). Successful folk singer-songwriter Danny O'Conner took an advance from a recording contract and became Canary Conn, continuing her musical career, as well as becoming a staff writer for Playgirl magazine. Walter Carlos, another musician who was well known for his work in electronic music as well as scoring the soundtrack to the 1971 Stanley Kubrick film "A Clockwork Orange", became Wendy Carlos in 1972. Wendy continues to work in music, and recorded a follow up to her 1967 breakthrough "Switched on Bach", as well as composing the scores for the 1982 science fiction classic "Tron" and Stanley Kubrick's horror film "The Shining."

As the 80's rolled in, the situation was even more harsh for transsexuals. Other universities took the cue from John Hopkins and began closing their gender clinics. The gay and lesbian community were distancing themselves even further from transgendered folks. Despite a high profile in popular culture (shown in gender bending performers such as Boy George, Annie Lennox, and just about every Los Angeles hard rock band), transsexuals and other gender-variant people were still looked upon as 'freaks', even by those who they had stood beside during their own trials.

Feeling lost and rejected by society, the transsexual and transgendered community looked to itself for support. In 1987, a organization called the International Foundation for Gender Education was founded, and it allowed transgendered people to come together for the first time to talk about common issues they all faced, as well as push for their civil rights. While nothing immediate happened, change, support, and acceptance would begin to come in the 1990's.

In 1995, San Francisco prohibited discrimination on the basis of gender identity, becoming the first major city in the United States to do so. Other cities and states soon followed, including Minnesota, Nebraska, and Oregon. A national lobby group, which started out as the "Transsexual Menace", changed its name to GenderPAC and began to lobby Congress in Washington DC for the rights of transgendered people. Its chairperson, Riki Wachins, was, in 2001, honored by Time Magazine as one of the "Top Innovators of 2001".

However, it seems that the better things are, the worse things get. Violence against transgendered people has risen significantly. On New Year's Eve, 1993, a young transgendered man named Brandon Teena was brutally murdered and raped when her given gender was discovered. Others, less publicly covered, included Stephanie Yazum, who was murdered by a boyfriend, Tyra Henderson, who was bludgeoned to death in Washington DC after police had failed to respond to a 911 call, and Amanda Milan, who had her throat slashed on a busy street in New York City while passing cab drivers cheered her death. And recently, the murder of a young transgendered girl named Gwen Araujo captured the media's attention to this growing problem.

While laws may be changing, the hurdles that transsexuals must face in society are daunting. The history of these pioneers, from Magnus Hirschfield to Harry Benjamin, Christine Jorgensen and Riki Wachins, is an interesting and powerful one, and the updating of discrimination laws are essential, but the tragedies (27 transgendered people were murdered in 2002 alone) are what people need to look at when it comes to how these people are treated. As a transgendered woman myself, I face a set of roadblocks that would make most people would toss their hands up and give up. But our history is full of powerful, strong willed people, and knowing one's history is essential to knowing one's self.

  

  

  

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