In the Beginning: How My Photos of 1950s Crossdressers Inspired a Hit Show on Broadway (2014)
In 2013 Andrea was visiting our own Miqqi Gilbert at Miqqi’ s home in Toronto and Miqqi showed her Hurst and Swope’s book. Andrea immediately realized she had taken and developed most of the photos in the book.
Read MoreCreating Community: A History of Early Transgender Support in Atlanta (2015)
In which I provide an illustrated and incomplete history of transpeople in Atlanta, ending around 1994.
Read MoreAll We Were Allowed to Write (2014)
Before 1994 or so, transpeople were excluded from our own literature. We authored no textbooks and had no book chapters or articles in professional journals. What we could get published, at least from the 1950s onward through 1990 or so, were autobiographies.
Read MoreGender Reassignment Surgeries in the XXth Century (2015)
The techniques used in modern plastic surgery—including GRS—were developed almost exclusively by this man, who is considered the father of plastic surgery. His name was Harold Gillies.
Read MoreDismantling the Gender Binary (2015)
This are the notes for my keynote delivered at Transgender Lives: The Intersection of Health and Law, Farmington, CT, 25 April, 2015
Read MoreTrans Pioneers to Lead University of Victoria Symposium (2014)
Dallas Denny is one of four pioneers of the trans rights movement featured at Moving Trans History Forward, a three-day symposium starting today at the University of Victoria.
Read MorePreserving Trans History: A Short History and Suggestions for the Future (2014)
Clearly the mere establishment of a trans archive at the University of Michigan has resulted in donations in the form of money and materials—and clearly the university itself is proud of the collection and is motivated to grow it. And clearly, the collection has grown since 2000.
Read MoreNot Screwed Up Enough (2013)
I was honored to be asked by The Triangle Coalition to present this keynote. I was treated like royalty while at the University of Missouri at Columbia.
Read MoreCurrent Concepts in Transgender Identity (1998)
Current Concepts is an edited textbook; I was privileged to be the editor. The text consists of emerging ideas about trans* issues authored by physicians, psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, historians, and advocates, many with decades of experience in the field. The work is in part an homage to Richard Green and John Money’s 1969 edited text Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment, which established early treatment protocols. Both Green and Money contributed chapters to Current Concepts. Of Current Concepts, Of just how much things have changed, Green wrote in his chapter, “I am struck at the outset that the biggest change with this new text may be that it is edited by a transsexual.”
Read MoreBlack Telephones, White Refrigerators: Rethinking Christine Jorgensen (1998)
If she changed the world for nontranssexual people, Jorgensen had an even more profound effect on people who were like her. Her story galvanized many transsexual men and women into seeking the same sort of medical treatment. In 1953, Christine Hamburger published a paper in which he described receiving 465 letters from men and women, desperately begging for a “sex change.” Neither he, nor anyone else, was prepared to oblige them.
Read MoreWhere We’ve Been and Where We’re Going (2011)
When a keynote presenter bailed at Fantasia Fair, Dainna Cicotello and I were asked to do this presentation on short notice—24 hours. This is my portion of the presentation. I was asked to give it again at the TransEvent Conference in Albany—and did.
Read MoreOne Hundred Years in the Spotlight (2011)
I take a look at how transpeople have been portrayed in the movies and talk about new opportunities for self-expression provided by emerging categories of media.
Read MoreNTL&A Dedication Ceremony Program Book (2004)
In 2004 the University of Michigan held a dedication ceremony for the National Transgender Library & Archive.
Read MoreNTL&A Holdings at The LGBT Historical Society of California
When the Board of Gender Education & Advocacy, Inc. donated the National Transgender Library & Archive to the University of Michigan, we requested duplicated be awarded to the LGBT Historical Society of California.
Read MoreThe U-M’s Labadie Collection Now Includes a T-Shirt That Reads, “Boys Will Be Girls.” (2004)
Highlights from the NL&A will be on exhibit at the Hatcher Graduate library through May 29. Denny’s own favorite item is a 1953 program from Madame Arthur’s the Parisian transvestite cabaret. Herrada points out a pair of narrow, black high-heeled sandals with peach rosettes that were worn by Virginia Prince.
Read MoreLibrary Acquires Materials on Transsexual/Transgender Movement (2001)
The National Transgender Library and Archive (NTL&A), a vast repository of materials documenting the history of the transgender movement, is now part of the University of Michigan Library.
Read MoreLibrary Opens Transgender Collection (2004)
Yesterday, Dallas was present at the Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library, where her personal collection of more than 1,500 titles related to transgender issues —the National Transgender Library and Archive — was officially unveiled as part of the University’s Labadie Collection.
Read MoreTwenty-Nine Linear Feet! (2013)
Twenty-nine linear feet! If you’re a book geek, if you’ve spent a lot of time in libraries and archives, you’re already excited. If not, let me the space a collection takes on a library’s shelves is described in linear feet. In this case it’s the cumulative length of the pamphlets, flyers, and correspondence of The National Transgender Library & Archive materials at the Labadie Collection at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Thousands of books and hundreds of journal titles are housed elsewhere in the archive and aren’t counted in those twenty-nine linear feet.
Read MoreGEA’s Request for Proposals for Award of National Transgender Library & Archive (2000)
Gender Education and Advocacy (GEA) is in search of a permanent home for its National Transgender Library & Archive (NTL&A), a large collection of books, magazines, catalogs, flyers, personal papers, and ephemera about transsexualism and transgenderism currently located in Atlanta, GA.
Read MoreThe Origin of the National Transgender Library & Archive (2004)
When I was fourteen years old, I went to the card catalogue of the public library in the small (pop. 30,000) southern town in which I lived and looked up the words transvestite and transsexual. I was scared to death.
Read MorePreserving Our History (2001)
Ten years ago I came to realize that as a community we had little sense of our history. There seemed to be no libraries, archives, or repositories for transgender materials, and few of our national organizations maintained archival copies of their own materials. A few organizations, most notably Tri-Ess, had been wise enough to donate archival materials to universities and archives, but for the most part, our history was being discarded and destroyed on a daily basis.
Read MoreTransgender Education Through the Decades (2010)
The Empire Conference is a transgender event held every spring in Albany, NY. Event organizers Kristine James and Alison Laing invited me to present this keynote, and someone– I think Jean Lewis– recorded it.
Read MoreThe Impact of Emerging Technologies on One Transgender Organization (2001)
In this paper I talk about the transition of the 501(c)(3) American Educational Gender Information Service from a brick-and-mortar provider of information to an online entity.
Read MoreTransgender Archives: The First Pilgrimage (2011)
Yesterday I walked out the door of my girlfriend’s apartment in the Hudson Valley, crossed the street, and caught a bus to New York City. I was embarking on the first of what I hope to be a dozen or so pilgrimages to visit the world’s known repositories of transgender and transsexual historical materials.
Read MoreTranssexualism at Sixty, Part I (2013)
Twenty years ago I took a look at transsexualism on its fortieth birthday, as arbitrarily determined by Christine Jorgensen’s return from Denmark. News of her sex reassignment resulted in international headlines in December, 1952, knocking news of the first hydrogen bomb test from the front page of the New York Times. Take that, all you one-name celebrities!
Read MoreTranssexualism at Sixty, Part II (2013)
I’ve been taking a look at a paper I wrote twenty years ago. Forty years had passed since Christine Jorgensen’s return to the U.S. after sex reassignment in Denmark and the world went crazy for five minutes, so I called the piece Transsexualism at Forty. Now my paper is twenty years old and transsexualism is sixty.
Read MorePreserve Our (And Your) History (2013)
Twenty or so years ago I was on the phone with Ms. Bob Davis in San Francisco. We were talking about our collections of transgender historical material and wondering how much material was out there and what it might be worth. “In ten years we’ll know,” said Ms. Bob. “The Internet will sort it out.”
Read MoreTrans Trading Cards: Reed Erickson (1999)
Reed Erickson’s story, although obscured by time and his history of protecting his privacy, is a fascinating one that was almost lost but is slowly emerging through the historical research of Dr. Aaron Devor, a sociologist at the University of Victoria in British Columbia.
Read MoreTrans Trading Cards: Lili Elbe (1999)
Niels Hoyer’s account of Lili’s transformation, originally published in 1933, is haunting, prose so beautifully written it seems like poetry. Man into Woman is out of print and hard to find, but the 1953 reprint editions isn’t unduly expensive.
Read MoreTrans Trading Cards: Harry Benjamin, M.D. (1999)
Harry Benjamin was of enormous importance for transsexuals, for it was he who named and described transsexualism as a medical syndrome.
Read MoreTrans Trading Cards (1999)
There are of course no trans trading cards, although there are sets of serial and spree killers, the Iran-Contra scandal, and freaks. But if there were….
Read MoreSsshhh! The Newsletter of the National Transgender Library & Archive (1995)
Shhhh! was the newsletter of the National Transgender Library & Archive, a subsidiary of the nonprofit American Educational Gender Information Service. This was the first issue—a one-pager that made the community aware of AEGIS’ interest in preserving transgender history.
Read MoreChristine Jorgensen and MTF Articles, Encyclopedia of Human Sexuality (2015)
The editors of the Encyclopedia of human sexuality asked me to contribute two articles– one an entry on Christine Jorgensen and the second on male-to-female identities and behavior. after some time has elapsed, I’ll ask permission from Wiley-Blackwell to print them here. Hopefully, they will say yes.
Read MoreTranssexualism at Forty (1993)
Forty years ago, Christine Jorgensen was in Copenhagen, Denmark, and not just to see the sights. She was undergoing the final stages of a series of hormonal and surgical treatments that would enable her to live the rest of her life as a woman, even though she had been raised as a boy, had duly grown into a man, and had even served a hitch in the U.S. Army. Her “sex change,” as it came to be called, was hardly the first, but when the story was leaked to the newspapers, the headlines shocked the world, creating a media circus which has lasted for forty years.
Read MoreReed Erickson (1998)
Reed Erickson was an important in the history of transsexualism. It’s unfortunate he’s been almost forgotten, for he did more for transsexual people than anyone else, with the possible exception of Christine Jorgensen and Dr. Harry Benjamin. His story, although obscured by time and his history of protecting his privacy, is a fascinating one that was almost lost but is slowly emerging through the historical research of Dr. Aaron Devor, a Sociologist at the University of Victoria in British Columbia.
Read MoreOur Transgender Heritage (1999)
This disregard of our individual histories is reflected in our community’s lack of attention to its past. We have done little to preserve and honor our pioneers, our heroes and heroines, those men and women who gave their freedom or their lives because they dared to be themselves, those men who sweated blood to build the community.
Read MoreChanging Models of Transsexualism (2004)
The transgender model has opened a middle ground that was not possible under the medical model it replaced. Before about 1990, transgendered persons were expected to declare themselves to be crossdressers, who were not expected to seek sex reassignment; or transsexuals, who were expected to and who came under pressure from peers when they didn’t.
Read MoreWhere is Our History? (Censored Editorial, 2004)
Rikki Swin has been absolutely irresponsible and has violated trust by not keeping the community informed of the collection’s condition and whereabouts. It could, for all we know, be poorly stored, shredded, or lost.
Read MoreNice Box. Wonder What’s In It? (2001)
I like parties. I went to this one because I knew there would be chocolate-dipped strawberries (and there were). But the Rikki Swin Institute’s debut was a display in arrogance and ostentation in a community which is conspicuously poor. The asparagus budget alone could have supported several of the transgender community’s smaller organizations for a year or more.
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