Yesterday, the 19th pointed to a new book, scheduled for publication today, which has input from 40 authors and took more than a decade to put together, which is essentially a history of transgender. So many people think this is a new thing and an imaginary thing- and it isn’t. I am close to 80 and I have known about it since I was a little girl, and it wasn’t new them. What was (relatively) new was transition health care. That started in the 1920s, but only became publicized in the US in the early 1950s. When Christine Jorgensen had her first surgery, I was 6, and 7 when she had her second and was “outed” by the New York Daily News. The third was not available then, but when it was, she had it in the US. (And her pronouns were “she and her.”) And since she became a widely known actress, she was in the public eye a lot. You can look her up in the IMDB. My mother did not believe in keeping current events away from me. Jorgensen’s biography was not published until 1963 as a serial, at which time I was in college and not seeing current affairs, or in book form until 1967, at which time I was newly out of the USMC and back in college. Some of the theories that were put forward about her would have been funny if they weren’t so hurtful – some things don’t change. Sigh. Of course people have been born everywhere on the gender spectrum since people have existed. I would bet the same is true of at least mammals, and possibly all animals and some plants.
I don’t remember any of the history on this, which means that either it did not get much coverage while it was happening, or that I missed it completely. If it’s the latter, I apologize. It leads up to a fairly disturbing ending too.
Yes, well, we all saw this coming. But that’s no reason for Joyce Vance not to freak out about it. (Maybe “freak out” is an overstatement – but there’s such a combination of rage, sorrow, and apprehension here I don’t know what else to call it.)
AddOn video: Katie Porter explains where we are on Yambo’s funding freeze.
