:PROPERTIES:
:ID:       04c424ec-b1fb-42f8-a8da-6ac9b7c2461d
:ROAM_REFS: cite:SusanStryker2021
:END:
#+TITLE: Second edition transgender history: the roots of today’s revolution
#+filetags: :literature:books:

An account of [[id:52380883-51c6-4736-8dfb-794ce19d54e2][Transgender]] history in the United States from the 1800s
through 2017.

* Prologue
** Coming Out
#+begin_quote
When I [[id:bd399ef9-9cc0-425c-8fc3-edf313a676f2][started living full-time]] as an openly transsexual lesbian woman in San
Francisco in the early 1990s, I was finishing my PhD in United States history at
the University of California, Berkeley. Transitioning was something I needed to
do for my personal sense of well-being, but it wasn’t a great career move.
However wonderful it was for me to finally feel right about how I presented
myself to others and how others perceived me, making the transition from living
as a man to living as a woman had negative effects on my life. Like many other
transgender women, I spent years being marginally employed because of other
people’s discomfort, ignorance, and prejudice about me. Transitioning made
relationships with many friends and relatives more difficult. It made me more
vulnerable to certain kinds of legal discrimination, and it often made me feel
unsafe in public.
#+end_quote
* Chapter 4: The Difficult Decades
** The Transexual Empire
Janice Raymond's inflammatory book "The Transexual Empire: The Making of the
She-Male" is covered, in which a connection between transexualism and naziism is
imagined through some curious leaps of imagination.  Citing Magnus Hirschfeld
being German as a link, somehow, despite his institute and its literature being
the highlight of nazi book burnings. That nightmare of a book came out in 1979.
Meanwhile, the BBC [[https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/02/11/graham-linehan-newsnight-transgender-children-nazi-doctors-puberty-blockers/][continues to host nutjobs making the same exact claims]].
** Sylvia Rivera's speech
Susan does a real nice job of contextualizing Sylvia Rivera's [[id:7b79eeb7-0387-4dd8-9a51-2fe27cea083d][short impassioned
speech]] in 1973, which was featured in Netflix's "[[id:763c1a02-3501-4412-a258-5751d0c910c0][Disclosure]]" documentary,
regarding divisions and tensions with cis and white members of the gay and
feminist movements.
** Pathology and treatment
The contradiction is pointed out between the pathologization of queer and trans
identities (there is something wrong that needs to be treated) vs. labeling
treatment as cosmetic or otherwise not medically necessary (don't treat it).

#+begin_quote
In spite of it being recognized by psychomedical 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 insurable as a legitimate
health care need; if treating it was not considered medically necessary, it
should not have been listed as a disease.
#+end_quote
* Chapter 5: The Millennial Wave
** AIDS and the reclamation of "Queer"
Interesting. It's now gotten into the reclamation of the "queer" [[id:d4035c81-6be0-412c-855a-1c7973ed62c8][slur]] as part of
the various LGBT communities coming together to deal with the AIDS epidemic. Not
the most fun way to pull disparate communities together, but certainly an
effective one. *Diseases, it turns out, are quite impactful on disadvantaged
minorities, and aggressively intersectional.*
** ENDA
The federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act. Controversy over gender identity
protections that were added (and subsequently stripped) from the failed bill
sparked division in the LGBT movement.
* Chapter 6: The Tipping Point?
** Participation in uprisings
[[id:3053cbbe-8803-4255-8c0a-eed43d66c8a0][Trans people]] have played significant roles in activist and anarchist groups,
such as those who registered OccupyWallStreet.org and the Philadelphian "Trans
World Order" group that ran its servers.

There is also the case of Chelsea Manning and the information she released to
Wikileaks. Her treatment was appallingly cruel. ACLU attorney Chase Strangio
(also trans) handled her case until her sentence was communted by President
Obama.

The Black Lives Matter movement is itself highly intersectional in its mission.
** Incarceration and sex work
Trans people face possible arrest on the /assumption/ that they are involved in
sex work. Jails and prisons are also often sex-segregated, effectively holding
transgender men with women and vice-versa, or in solitary confinement. They may
also be denied their hormone medication, and are at high risk of sexual assault.
** Transgender studies
https://www.digitaltransgenderarchive.net/
** Transgender civil rights
Trans civil rights made great strides, particularly during the Obama
administration, but faced massive setbacks as the Trump administration began. It
feels though that now we're very much still embroiled in the backlash from those
gains, with the behavior of the Trump administration and its emboldening of
groups with conservative agendas alongside "[[id:b08fb6b0-aedf-4066-ba3c-ca03aa323d33][Trans-Exclusionary Radical
Feminists]]". Accusations fly of a "transgender lobby" pushing "gender ideology".

#+begin_quote
If there is a lesson to be learned from US transgender history at the
dispiriting moment in which these words are being written, it is that trans
people have a long record of survival in a world that is often hostile to us.
#+end_quote