Layer Four: History
A common hangup for the transgender skeptics is the idea that being
transgender, or experiencing gender dysphoria—the feeling that one’s gender
doesn’t match the assigned gender at birth—is a relatively new phenomenon.
Older people usually state it bluntly: When I was young it was simple, everyone
was just a boy or a girl! That sentiment has become a staple of conservative
demagoguery. Republican Senator Ted Cruz, for example, once bitterly
complained that “for all of recorded history people have known what a woman
is,” until now.
But this misconception also shows itself whenever people start speculating as to
why so many people are “becoming” trans.
Some have speculated that social media is the culprit, maybe it’s a popular fad on
TikTok that young teens want to participate in. Others have suggested that
teachers are “grooming” children into questioning their gender. This is also
Donald Trump’s explanation; he has frequently vowed to remove “the left-wing
gender insanity being pushed on our children” out of America’s schools.
The many theories posited by the Right are all rooted in the same belief that
being trans is new—it was never a thing, and now suddenly it’s ubiquitous.
However, the truth is that, despite the obscurantist rhetoric, gender dysphoria
and gender-nonconforming people have always existed, and we can trace the
record back all the way to antiquity. Though it might have taken a while for the
word “transgender” to take shape and enter our dictionaries, the phenomena
antedate the word. Basically, the modern-day concept of being transgender was
created to realize an already existing purpose: to conceptualize and advocate for
gender diversity in a society that thinks gender is binary.
Some of the earliest depictions of gender-nonconforming or intersex people (that
could probably be anachronistically labeled as “transgender”) dates back to the
Neolithic period—the last era of the Stone Age where humans evolved from
hunter-gatherer life-styles and started farming, keeping livestock, and living in
settlements. There are drawings and sculpted figurines from this era depicting
people with either ambiguous or mixed sex characteristics (e.g. a person with
breasts and a penis).
In 2011, archaeologists in today’s Czech Republic discovered three grave sites
from the Late Neolithic period. They were buried according to the traditions of
Corded Ware culture—a culture that existed in Europe from the Late Neolithic,
through the Copper Age, and into the early Bronze Age. They had very specific
sepulture traditions; so much so that another name for (a subset of) Corded Ware
culture—Single Grave culture—comes from their funeral customs.
Men were interred with symbolic stone axes or flint knives, and were laid down
on their right side facing east. Women were buried on their left facing west, along
with amber necklaces and sometimes a small oval-shaped container.
In one of the three graves excavated by the Czech archaeologists, a body was
found laying on their left side facing west, along with a small oval-shaped box.
The skeleton, meanwhile, had clearly undergone a “male,” or testosterone
puberty.
“We believe this is one of the earliest cases of what could be described as a
‘transsexual’ or ‘third gender grave’ in the Czech Republic,” one archaeologist
told the press. “From history and ethnology, we know that when a culture had
strict burial rules they never made mistakes with these sorts of things,” the head
of the research team said.
There are also “female” remains buried according to the male traditions—with
large axes and flint tools—and it’s possible some of them identified as men;
although it’s equally, if not more likely that they were cis-female warriors. This is
partly why identifying trans men throughout history is tricky.
For instance, there is still debate among scholars about the identity of Jeanne
d’Arc (Joan of Arc in English). After the legendary military leader was captured,
she (or perhaps he) was tried by the Inquisition. The charge had nothing to do
with her being an enemy (at least not explicitly). Rather the church was outraged
that she dressed and acted as a man. She was offered a way out: her freedom for
her choice of clothes—she would have to dress only as a woman. She refused,
saying, “For nothing in the world I will swear not to arm myself and put on a
man’s dress.”
She was burned at the stake by the Catholic church for refusing its doctrines.
Before she was burnt all the way, church officials removed her clothes to show
the crowd that she was indeed female and thus a heretic. Then they burned her
all the way.
Was Jeanne d’Arc’s refusal to dress as a woman the heroic swan song of a brave
warrior—a final act of martyrdom? Or was there a deeper, more personal
motivation? An unwillingness, perhaps, to suffer what seemed like an inauthentic
life to “him”? It’s difficult to say. Women have served in men’s dress in armies
since the beginning of wars. The story of Mulan is another famous example of
this.
But there are cases that are not so ambiguous. Take Albert Cashier, a soldier who
fought in the US Civil War. He was assigned female at birth and given the name
“Jennie Hodges,” but upon immigrating to the United States he adopted the
name Albert and worked and dressed as a man.
There are many Mulan-like stories of the Civil War—the American Battlefield
Trust estimates that between 400 and 750 women fought in the war, and some
historians give even higher estimates—usually, though, these women went back
to their regular clothes, pronouns, and identities after the war.
Not Albert Cashier.
Having fought as a Union soldier in at least forty campaigns, he escaped enemy
capture and performed a heroic flag rescue, Cashier declined his military pension
as it would’ve required a full medical examination. He wrote letters to a female
“sweetheart” and worked as a handyman and farm laborer.
His secret was discovered after he became old and feeble. Albert was admitted to
an asylum in 1914 and died the following year. Despite not being a cisgender
man, he was buried with full military honors after his fellow soldiers rallied to his
support.
So clearly, finding people who were likely (anachronistically) trans men is not
impossible, but it’s significantly easier to document the existence of trans
women.
In ancient Greece, the physician Hippocrates once wrote about the Scythians, a
people from modern-day Iran, and observed that some of them were eunuchs
“who perform female work, and speak like women. Such persons are called
effeminates.”
“They put on female attire, reproach themselves for effeminacy, play the part of
women, and perform the same work as women do,” Hippocrates wrote.
Ancient Greek historian Herodotus, nicknamed “The Father of History,” made
the same observations as Hippocrates did. In the first volume of his nine-book
magnum opus titled Histories, he writes that these feminized Scythians are
believed to be the descendents of a small group of Scythians who once plundered
a temple in Ascalon, a port city in the Levant, build by the Phoenicians.
“The Scythians who plundered the temple were punished by the goddess with the
female sickness, which still attaches to their posterity,” Herodotus wrote. “They
themselves confess that they are afflicted with the disease for this reason … Those
who suffer from it are called Enarees.”
In ancient Rome, meanwhile, the rigid lines of the gender binary were
continuously blurred, but not usually by choice. Emperor Nero, for instance, after
losing his wife in childbirth (or maybe after having murdered her in a fit of rage),
found a young man who very much resembled her. His name was Sporus, an ex-
slave, who became the empress of Rome after being castrated and married to
Nero in a traditional wedding ceremony. The emperor called Sporus “Sabina,” his
widow’s name, and appointed his courtier, noblewoman Calvia Crispinilla, as the
empress’ “Mistress of Wardrobe.”
The empress would often accompany Nero in public, dressed in the finest garb
and requisite regalia of an emperor’s wife.
Historians, modern and contemporary, generally considered this marriage a
miserable one, although Sporus did give Nero a ring depicting Hades raping
Persephone. This ring is usually offered as proof that Sporus was trying to curse
Nero, but it’s worth noting that in Greek mythology the relationship between
Persephone and Hades is among the healthier ones. He ends up feeling guilty and
lets her go, she ends up falling in love and stays to marry him.
Persephone’s mother, Demeter, gets depressed that her daughter will stay in the
underworld. Demeter’s depression causes the planet to grow cold and plants to
wither and die, so Persephone and Hades propose that she will spend half the
year with her husband and the other half with her mother.
When Persephone is with Demeter, the world breathes life again, flowers bloom
and the sun is warm, and when she’s with her husband Hades, the flowers wilt
and leaves turn brown and fall from the trees. This is the explanation of seasons
in Greek mythology.
Unlike Persephone, Sporus stayed with Nero until the end. The emperor had
other spouses: he also married his wine servant, Pythagoras, in a ceremony
where Nero was the bride and Pythagoras the groom. In bed, Pythagoras would
play the part of “husband” to Nero, and later to Sporus as well. But neither
Pythagoras nor Nero’s female wife, Messalina, would accompany him, like
Sporus did, on his last journey where the emperor committed suicide.
But Nero is far from the only emperor with such lecherous appetites. Julius
Caesar, too, would cross-dress in the bedroom for King Nicomedes of Bithynia,
something his political opponents never let him forget. When Caesar addressed
the senate to enumerate Rome’s obligations to King Nicomedes, Cicero cried: “No
more of that, pray, for it is well known what he gave you, and what you gave him
in turn!”
Caesar was given the nickname, “the Queen of Bithynia.” Whereas the politician
Gaius Scribonius Curio once called Caesar, “every woman’s man and every man’s
woman.”
Still, these are merely examples of homosexuality and cross-dressing, not any
kind of gender diversity. But those accounts do exist. Philo of Alexandria, the
famous religious philosopher, provided one account of early Romans suffering
from gender dysphoria:
Taking
every
possible
care
on
their
outward
adornment,
they
are
not
ashamed
even
to
employ
every
device
to
change
artificially
their
nature
as
men
into
women
…
Some
of
them
…
craving
a
complete
transformation
into
women,
have chopped off their penises.
Another account comes from the poet and astrologer Marcus Manilius:
[They]
are
obsessed
with
their
bedizenment
and
good
looks;
to
curl
the
hair
and
lay
it
in
waving
ripples
…
to
polish
the
shaggy
limbs
…
and
to
hate
the
very
sight
of
[themselves
as]
a
man,
and
long
for
arms
without
growth
of
hair.
Women’s robes they wear … [their] steps broken to an effeminate gait.
There are also accounts of emperor Elagabalus’ efforts to become a woman.
Although, since Elagabalus was a widely-detested ruler there is some debate as to
the impartiality of these contemporary accounts. On the other hand, it’s not
outside the realm of possibility. And modern skeptical scholars could, to an
extent, be succumbing to their own biases.
In any event, Elagabalus is said to have dressed in fine silk dresses and
demanded to be called “mistress,” “queen,” or “lady.” When someone addressed
them as “my lord,” they responded, “Don’t call me lord, I am a lady.”
Elagabalus reportedly offered half the empire’s riches to any surgeon that could
give them a vagina.
If you look for gender dysphoria throughout history, you can trace it in virtually
any society.
The hijra, for example, in India, are mentioned in the ancient Sanskrit poem
Ramayana. The story follows Rama, one of Vishnu’s incarnations, and his wife,
who both get exiled by his father. That sets off the adventure of the poem.
When Rama is exiled, since he is beloved, most of the townspeople follow him to
the edge of the forest. Rama turns to them and implores, “men and women, turn
back.” But the people who were “neither men nor women” didn’t know what to
do. When Rama returns 14 years later, they are still camping out in the edge of
the forest, waiting for him. Grateful, Rama blessed the hijra and promised they
would one day inherit the world.
As a result, the hijra were believed to bestow good fortune and fertility if they
danced at weddings or were present at the birth of a child. When the British
colonized India, they were disgusted at the society’s acceptance of the hijras, and
stripped them of all legal protections. That, combined with the erosion of the
cultural superstitions, meaning the hijras didn’t get invited to weddings
anymore, forced many hijras into prostitution to survive. It was only in 2014,
with the emergence of an LGBTQ advocacy network in India, that New Delhi
officially recognized the hijras as a third gender.
Similarly, the hodgepodge of Native American tribes and cultures had terms for
gender-variant people. The Ojibwe, for instance, had defined gender roles in
society, but they didn’t define gender on a merely biological basis. The Ojibwe
word for “one who endeavors to be like a woman” was ikwekanaazo, and “one
who endeavors to be like a man” was ininiikaazo.
The Mohaves had two comparable terms: the alyha and hwame, respectively.
It’s worth noting that these tribal identities, some of which still exist to a certain
degree, are not the same as the modern concept of being transgender. These are
distinct systems of gender classification which differ across societies. Because of
the extermination campaign by the white settlers, the rich patchwork of Native
American culture has been largely destroyed, and the reconstructed version of a
single, unified Native culture is mostly fictitious.
There are gender-diverse Native Americans today that identify as transgender;
one of the various third- or fourth-genders derived from Native American
spirituality; or both. At its best, the LGBTQ movement has advocated for the
rights and recognition of indigenous concepts of gender without conflating it with
contemporary terminology.
Other varied examples of traditional third genders include the fa’afafine in
Samoan culture, the Thai notion of kathoey, the Sarombavy in Madagascar, et
cetera.
The European Christian colonists considered all this taboo—part of the savage
culture in need of “civilizing.” But even in the “civilized” West, no matter how
prudish the culture became, trans people continued to exist.
Author Eli Erlick documented some of their stories in her book Before Gender:
Lost Stories From Trans History 1850-1950. My favorite was a red-haired 14-
year-old girl named Emma Heinrich.
Emma
was
born
in
1891
in
Germany
before
immigrating
to
suburban
New
Jersey
around
1899.
Like
a
surprising
number
of
other
trans
youth
during
her
time,
her
whole
family
supported
her
gender
identity
and
expression.
They
were
unwavering
in
their
defense
of
her
girlhood.
Although
Emma
knew
she
was
a
girl,
she
still
refused
to
define
herself
by
her
gender.
She
paired
feminine
hats, always adorned with flowers, with comfortable jackets designed for boys.
In her early teens, Emma founded a small street gang and stole for her financially
poor family along with other youths. When she was eventually arrested, the
police were puzzled by her “boyish nature.”
“She is a Tom Boy,” her father explained. “She invariably associates with boys
and leads a reckless sort of existence.”
As punishment for her burglaries, Emma was sent to the State Home for Girls—a
notoriously brutal institution. The girl inmates were frequently whipped as a
punishment, or put into a small windowless room called “the ‘dark’ dungeon” for
several days.
On January 1, 1906, a state doctor examined Emma and discovered she was
assigned male at birth. It caused quite an uproar. An attendant quickly brought
Emma to the country jail, telling she sheriff, “We can’t keep her at the home.”
“Why not?” asked the sheriff. “She’s bad, I know, but you must have many such
there.”
“No, none like her. She’s a boy.”
“What!” yelled the sheriff as he jumped from his chair.
They summoned the doctor who’d examined Emma. “Undoubtedly a boy,” he
told them.
“What do you mean,” the sheriff shouted, grabbing Emma’s skirts, “going around
dressed like this?”
“I don’t know,” Emma shrugged when she was asked about it, “I never dressed
any other way that I can remember.”
The judge decided to offer her a retrial. Emma’s brother and stepmother went to
court to demand her release, and both insisted she was a girl. In the end, the
judge concluded Emma should just be sent home.
A local newspaper reported that “‘Emma’ doesn’t want to wear trousers; ‘she’
objects to separation from dresses and ribbons—‘she’ wants to continue to be a
girl.”
It was only a few decades later that the modern concept of trans people
developed.
The work of a pioneering sexologist, a gay Jewish German man named Magnus
Hirschfeld, eventually introduced the (by now outdated) term “transsexual,” or
“transsexualismus” in German.
In 1919, Hirschfeld co-founded the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for
Sexual Research). It’s motto was “Per scientiam ad justitiam” (through science to
justice). Hirschfeld, both scientist and activist, had also founded the Scientific-
Humanitarian Committee to advocate for gay rights.
The institute fulfilled many public services, such as couples’ counseling and
reproductive healthcare. But the institute’s more enduring legacy comes from its
research into gay, trans, and intersex people. Hirschfeld build a unique archive at
the institute filled with research.
The first vaginoplasty was performed at the institute on Dora Richter. Another
notable person to get treated by Hirschfeld was Lili Elbe, one of the most famous
early trans women. Her autobiography, Man Into Woman: An Authentic Record
of a Change of Sex, was published posthumously. A film about Lili’s life was
made in 2015, titled The Danish Girl.
Unfortunately, the institute would not survive long. When the Nazis took power
in 1933, using cultural grievance and hate to hijack the anti-capitalist
movements, they vilified the institute. The Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer—its
name referring to Imperial Germany’s stormtroopers—labeled Hirschfeld “the
most dangerous Jew in Germany.” He fled the country, and eventually died in
exile.
Four months after the Nazis took power, a group of Nazi students—who
organized themselves as the Deutsche Studentenschaft (the German Student
Union)—attacked and ransacked the institute, including Hirschfeld’s unique
archive. They loaded the pillaged books, journals, studies, and magazines on a
truck and headed for the Kaiser-Franz-Josef-Platz (today the Bebelplatz) where
they held the first book burning in Nazi Germany.
All books considered to have “the un-German spirit” were targeted. Novels with
pro-democracy themes, communist literature, and everything written by Jewish
authors. The content of the institute’s library was incinerated because the Nazis
thought it was “degenerate.”
Speaking to the crowd, Joseph Goebbels commended them for cleansing
Germany of “intellectual filth.”
“The era of extreme Jewish intellectualism is now at an end. The breakthrough of
the German revolution has again cleared the way on the German path,” Goebbels
boasted. “And thus you do well in this midnight hour to commit to the flames the
evil spirit of the past. This is a strong, great, and symbolic deed—a deed which
should document the following for the world to know: here the intellectual
foundation of the [Weimar] Republic is sinking to the ground, but from this
wreckage the phoenix of a new spirit will triumphantly rise.”
In 1995, Jewish artist Micha Ullman build an empty library in the cobblestone
ground of Bebelplatz on the same spot where the books were burned, covered
with a glass plate so you can look into it from above. It features a plaque with a
quote by the German poet Heinrich Heine from 1820:
“Das war ein vorspiel nur, dort wo man bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am
ende auch menschen.”
“That was merely foreplay, where men burn books, men will eventually also burn
people.”
We better hope Heine was wrong because book burnings have already been
happening in the United States.
Earlier this year, in April, someone checked out 100 books from a public library
in Beachwood, Ohio. Some entries included Black Radical, Fighting Auschwitz,
Pride and Persistence: Stories of Queer Activism, and The ABCs of Queer
History.
Then, those books were thrown on a pile and burned. The video was posted on a
white supremacist Telegram channel with the title, “We are cleansing our
libraries of degenerate filth.”
Last year, Valentina Gomez, a Republican running in Missouri, posted a
campaign video of her burning two books—one about sex education, and another
titled Queer: The Ultimate LGBTQ Guide for Teens.
The video opens with Valentina holding a flamethrower as rap music starts
playing. “This is what I will do to the grooming books,” she says before engulfing
the books in flames. “These books come from a Missouri public library,” she then
says, “when I’m in office, they will burn.”
Briefly before the video ends, it cuts to a photo of her posing in a bullet proof
vest, holding an assault rifle.
It’s fairly comical, appearing more like a parody than anything else. But there is a
constituency for this bile. She thankfully lost her Missouri race, but has since
moved to Texas and is running for state congress.
In a statement to NBC News, her campaign director said: “You want to be gay?
Fine be gay. Just don’t do it around children. Stop putting books in libraries
about sexualization, indoctrination and grooming of children.” The examples he
gave of this alleged grooming were “pride flags in classrooms” and “teachers with
pronouns.”
In 2023, a Republican gubernatorial candidate in Missouri held a “Freedom Fest”
and used a flamethrower to light cardboard boxes on fire. That prompted
Republican State Senator Bill Eigel to suggest burning LGBTQ books on the lawn
of the governor’s mansion. He later insisted it was merely a metaphor to attack
the “woke liberal agenda.”
That would put him in the book banning category instead of the book burning
category. And there are even more instances of that happening.
Earlier this year, a local news station in Austin, Texas, aired a surprisingly sober
segment about book banning, after a school district removed chapters from
textbooks about vaccines, climate change, and diversity.
Journalist Joel Eisenbaum opened the segment by tearing out some pages from a
textbook. “Book banning, in one form or another, goes back a long time,” he said,
as footage of the Nazi book burnings played, “and now it’s fashionable again, at
least in some of our school districts.”
The piece was overall quite mild. But still, such honest coverage is rare in the
United States, and it didn’t take long for the Republicans to clutch their pearls in
a pantomime Victorian fainting fit.
“[Eisenbaum] is attacking Republican school board members in [Cypress-
Fairbanks], calling them Nazis—all because they dare to prioritize reading, math,
and science over leftist indoctrination,” representative Wesley Hunt wrote on
Twitter. That the news was even covering this, he added, “sounds like election
interference to me.”
Republican representative Steve Toth also took to Twitter: “Texas Parents, [sic]
you’re all Nazi Book Burners if you teach your kids there are only 2 sexes and
boys don’t belong in girls bathrooms.”
It didn’t take long for the news station’s director to bend over and apologize.
“While the facts of the story remain undisputed, we acknowledge that some
elements may be perceived as inflammatory,” she said. And promised that
leadership would discuss the importance of “tone, language, and video usage”
with journalists.
Maybe it’s the discomfort of realizing that modern conservative transphobia
shares this strain of its DNA with the classical fascist movements that motivates
TERFs to engage in ahistorical revisionism. When someone on Twitter pointed
out that the Nazis burned books about transgender people, the Wicked Witch of
the UK responded:
I
just…
how?
How
did
you
type
this
out
and
press
send
without
thinking
‘I
should
maybe
check
my
source
for
this,
because
it
might’ve
been
a
fever
dream’?
It’s far from a fever dream, and we have records to prove it. Biology student
Marie-Luise Vollbrecht found that out the hard way. Back in 2022, she asserted
that the Nazis had never targeted trans people, and suggesting they did was to
“mock the true victims of the Nazi crimes.” When people predictably responded
by accusing her of denying Nazi crimes, she sued some of them for slander,
alleging they smeared her for being tantamount to a Holocaust denier.
Vollbrecht lost her case in the German court, because, after reviewing the
evidence, the court concluded that trans people had in fact been victims of the
Nazis.
After taking power, the Nazis ordered the Hamburg police to send all
“transvestites” to concentration camps. Some of their records can be found in the
Nazi archives. For example, a transgender sex worker, Liddy Bacroff, died in
Mauthausen after being sent there. She was, according to Nazi officials, a “morals
criminal of the worst sort.”
Or take the case of Toni Simon, a Holocaust surviver, imprisoned because she
was, in the words of one Gestapo officer, a “pronounced transvestite.” He said
imprisoning her was “absolutely necessary.”
In 1938, Hermann Ferdinand Voss published Ein Beitrag zum Problem des
Transvestitismus (A Contribution to the Problem of Transvestitism). In which
he wrote, “Their asocial mindset, which is often paired with criminal activity,
justifies draconian measures by the state.”
Of course, evident by the fact that they referred to trans women as
“transvestites”—a cross-dresser in other words—shows that trans people were
often wrongly equated with gay people. Of which approximately 15,000 were put
into concentration camps, where many of them died.
It was a common conflation. The first well-known trans woman in the West,
Christine Jorgenson, was often wrongly described as gay. Trans women were
widely seen as a kind of “extreme” homosexual, which included the bigoted
misconceptions about effeminate men being almost diseased, weak and useless,
and not able to raise a family. And while Jorgenson would often give talks
educating people about what it meant to be trans, another trans woman named
Roberta Cowell would undermine many of the misconceptions in a way
Jorgenson couldn’t.
Cowell was a professional racing driver who was drafted in the Second World
War. She became a fighter pilot. In November, 1944, Cowell flew a bombing
mission over the north of Germany in a Hawker Typhoon aircraft. German anti-
aircraft fire put a hole in her wing and knocked out her engine. She crash-landed
and confirmed on her radio that she was unharmed but also about to be
captured.
The Nazis imprisoned her in the Stalag Luft I Prisoner of War (POW) camp. She
spent her time teaching her fellow inmates about automotive engineering.
Toward the end of the war, as food became scarce, she lost about 50 pounds.
Stalag Luft I was eventually liberated by the Red Army.
After the war, Cowell married Diana Carpenter, with whom she had two
daughters. But the marriage was unhappy, and Cowell was unhappy. She later
said that it felt as though “there had been an underlying air of falseness about it.”
She sought out therapy after her divorce, which made her realize that the
“feminine side of my nature, which all my life I had known of and severely
repressed, was very much more fundamental and deep-rooted than I had
supposed.”
She started taking estrogen, but couldn’t legally change her gender. She sought
out physician Michael Dillon, the first transgender man to receive gender-
affirming surgery in the UK, after reading his book Self. With her permission,
Dillon performed an illegal orchiectomy on Cowell, which then allowed her to
register as intersex with a private doctor, before having a new birth certificate
issued listing her as female.
Her transition became a media sensation. Roberta Cowell, World War II veteran,
professional racer, and mother of two, undermined the very notion of enfeebled
“extreme” gays dressing in skirts for sexual pleasure.
“British War Pilot Reported Transformed Into Woman,” a Seattle Daily Times
headline read.
Hormone
treatments
and
three
years
of
plastic
surgery
are
reported
by
the
Press
Association
to
have
transformed
a
British
Second
World
War
fighter
pilot
into
a
woman
in
what
“may
well
be
the
most
complete
change
of
sex
in
the
world’s medical history.”
The
British
news
agency
said
last
night
it
has
documents
to
prove
that
Bob
Cowell,
35,
a
former
Royal
Air
Force
lieutenant
and
father
of
two
children,
now
is
a
woman.
…
Young
Cowell
went
in
for
rugged
sports—rugby
football
and
automobile
and
motorcycle
racing.
As
a
Spitfire
pilot,
he
chalked
up
a
good
record
in
wartime
dog
fights.
He
spent
six
months
as
a
war
prisoner
after
being
shot down over Germany.
In
1948,
Cowell
began
hormone
treatment
to
switch
his
sex
after
noticing
a
change
in
his
physical
condition
and
mental
outlook
and
consulting
a
physician.
Then
he
underwent
operations
at
a
London
hospital
by
one
of
Britain’s
most
eminent surgeons.
Doctors verified to Registry officials that Cowell was a woman.
A
substitute
birth
certificate
was
issued
May
25,
1951,
for
Roberta
Elizabeth
Marshall
Cowell.
She
went
abroad
after
living
a
while
with
her
parents
in
Croydon and with her married brother and sister.
Amazingly, they even gender her correctly in the end. Her father, a doctor, also
defended her to the press, telling them, “I can say, not only as a father, but as a
doctor, she is recognizable in every way as a woman.”
The Daily Telegraph noted with surprise that “Publicity resulting from the
Cowell case has brought forward an astonishing number of men who want to
emulate Cowell’s example. One British doctor reported this week that he had
received 456 demands for similar operations.”
But, the increase in news coverage, even favorable, didn’t change the fact that
trans people continued to live in a world that fundamentally didn’t understand
and was hostile to them.
Because of that, trans people have always found refuge in the same underground
queer networks that gay people did. The struggle for rights and acceptance has
always been a shared effort—there is a reason it’s called the LGBTQ movement.
(That’s important to remember given the existence of hate-groups like LGB, a
British organization looking to play a divide-and-conquer game).
The first major LGBTQ uprising in modern history were the Stonewall Riots in
1969. On June 28th, at the Stonewall Inn in New York, the NYPD’s Public Morals
Squad conducted a raid to arrest gay and trans patrons. A common occurrence at
that time—that’s why the Public Morals Squad existed.
The Stonewall Inn, however, had been one of the last safe bars in New York, since
it belonged to the mafia. The raid was an attack on the last sanctuary many queer
people had. As the patrons were arrested—the gay men told to produce their IDs,
and the women lined up with female officers to verify their sex—the cops enjoyed
frisking the lesbians a little too much. The men refused to identify themselves.
Deputy Inspector Pine decided to simply arrest everybody, and ordered them to
step outside as he radioed for prisoner transport.
As the patrons filed out into the street, one after another, a crowd began to form.
As they watched the cops kick and push people into the street, the crowd began to
cheer for the patrons, some of whom began playing to their audience.
One of the onlookers shouted, “Gay power!” And later someone began singing
“We Shall Overcome.”
One woman was hauled out of the inn while cursing. After complaining that the
handcuffs were too tight, one of the cops hit her in the head with a baton. “Why
don’t you guys do something?” she yelled at the crowd. Yeah, the crowd thought,
why don’t we do something?
And just like that, the cops went from being symbols of fear and state authority,
to outnumbered prey. “Pigs!” was one of the nicer insults hurled at cops that
night.
Among the rioters was singer Dave Van Ronk, friend of Bob Dylan. Despite not
being gay, Ronk said, “As far as I was concerned, anybody who’d stand against
the cops was alright with me and that’s why I stayed in.”
At some point, the outnumbered pigs barricaded themselves in the Stonewall
Inn. Then, either the cops or the rioters set the building on fire. In the women’s
prison down the street, they began applauding the rioters. They set fire to their
belongings and tossed them out their windows down to the street, chanting “Gay
rights! Gay rights! Gay rights!”
It took a while for the mob to break open the doors, but just as they did, police
backup arrived from the NYPD’s Tactical Patrol Force.
“I had been in enough riots to know the fun was over,” Bob Kohler said. “The
cops were totally humiliated. This never, ever happened. They were angrier than
I guess they had ever been because everybody else had rioted … but the
fairies”—slang for gays—“were not supposed to riot … no group had ever forced
the cops to retreat before, so the anger was just enormous. I mean, they wanted
to kill.”
But the crowd didn’t yield. In fact, the police escalation had the opposite effect: it
only spurred them on. Most prominent of all, two Black trans women, Marsha P.
Johnson and Zazu Nova, put up the greatest resistance.
Even with police backup, the rioters ended up chasing the cops. Screaming,
“Catch them!”
The next night, the gays returned to Stonewall to riot again. They were out of the
inn, out of the closet, and they refused to be shoved back in. Following the riots,
gay liberation movements were founded across the United States.
It was the beginning of the LGBTQ movement in the United States, which
eventually spread across the world. We remember that every June. The Stonewall
Riots marked the beginning of Pride.
