<
https://theconversation.com/trans-people-arent-new-and-neither-is-their-oppression-a-history-of-gender-crossing-in-19th-century-australia-201663>
"Anti-transgender hatred is on the rise. Driven by pseudoscience and backed by
well-funded far-right pressure groups, part of the premise of the anti-trans
“gender critical” movement is that trans people are new and unnatural. History
shows us this is not the case.
The “trans” prefix emerged in 1910 with Magnus Hirschfeld’s research on
“transvestism” (initially a medical term). Hirschfeld was a gay German Jewish
doctor whose research centre, the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, has been
called the world’s first trans clinic. The institute was destroyed by Nazis in
1933. You might be familiar with this image of Nazi book-burning – the books in
question were Hirschfeld’s research.
In the 1800s, people who crossed gender categories were not understood to be
“transvestites” or transgender, but were referred to as “masqueraders”,
“impersonators”, “men-women” and “freaks”. As such, I consider my research to
be a work of shared queer and trans history, but not necessarily a history of
trans people. I am not interested in how people in the past might have
identified today, but in how they lived and how their communities responded to
them."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
