History of the Term 'Transgender'

History of the Term ‘Transgender’

Hello hello everyone! I hope you’re all well

Today’s discussion topic is going to be related to transgender and its history/origin

So, when did people start using the term ‘transgender’?

In 1965, Dr. John F. Oliven published a medical text that included one of the first known uses of the word "transgender." He wrote: “Where the compulsive urge reaches beyond female vestments, and becomes an urge for gender ('sex’) change, transvestism becomes 'transsexualism.' The term is misleading; actually, ‘transgenderism’ is what is meant, because sexuality is not a major factor in primary transvestism.” At this point, Dr. Oliven used the word “transgender” as a synonym for “transsexual” in reference to people who transition through surgery.

The other major origin point for the word "transgender" is with activist and trans pioneer Virginia Prince, who popularized the term through her advocacy and writing in the 1970s. In 1969, Prince first used the term “transgenderal” to distinguish herself from transsexuals, or those who used surgery to transition. Her use of the term “transgenderal” clearly differentiated between the ways people choose to transition. “I, at least, know the difference between sex and gender,” she wrote, “and have simply elected to change the latter and not the former. If a word is necessary, I should be termed a ‘transgenderal.’” The same year that Virginia Prince first used the term “transgenderal,” 1969, was also the year that the Stonewall Riots kicked off the modern gay rights movement. This moment marked a sea change in terms of wider visibility for the LGBTQ+ community.

A few years later, in 1974, social workers, medical professionals, and activists put on the first ever Transvestite and Transsexual Conference, at the University of Leeds. This literature, some of the earliest conference literature available on trans health, made clear distinctions between transvestites (people who dressed as the opposite gender), transsexuals (people who transitioned genders through surgery), and transgender people who did transition but did not elect to undergo surgery.

In 1975, another major milestone: the first time protections for transgender people were codified into civil rights law. The city of Minneapolis was the first to do so by passing a nondiscrimination ordinance preventing discrimination on the basis of “having or projecting a self-image not associated with one’s biological maleness or one’s biological femaleness.”

Throughout the 1980s, artists like Bruce Laker, who also went by Phaedra Kelly, had coined other terms like “gender transient” to refer to being transgender, which was still distinct from “transsexual.”

By the 1990s, the distinction between “transgender” and “transsexual” began to fade. According to Oxford English Dictionary lexicographer Jonathan Dent, this was around when the wider LGBTQ+ community began to embrace “trans*” as an umbrella term that would “cover a wide range of identities” that might not fit with “traditional notions” of gender, similar to “queer” for sexuality. Despite this, the term “trans*” didn’t make it into the OED until earlier this year.

Source: https://www.them.us/story/inqueery-transgender

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