Have you met these guys? Tobias will be highlighting five fascinating (mostly) men profiled on The Queer-A-Day-Project.
Confession: I have a chip on my shoulder so deep you could lose a hatchet blade in it, and that chip is labeled ‘researching queer history as a trans man. I’ve heard it said outright that trans men have never contributed anything to the world, and I carry the weight of those words with me whenever I choose a trans man to profile. For therapy as much as anything I made a special effort this month to focus on trans people, especially trans men and other trans people who were assigned female at birth. In keeping with the theme, August’s roundup is a skipping stone’s journey across a few points of transgender history.
The trip begins with Jamison Green, one of a few contemporary trans men to command some degree of public attention and influence. Green has had a hand in everything from policy writing to a stint helping govern the Human Rights Campaign (abandoned in 2007 during the ENDA trans-inclusion arguments), along with his own projects, including his book Becoming a Visible Man.
Aaron Devor, another researcher and activist, makes for a contrasting second stop; despite his writing a nearly 800 page book of ethnographies on the lives of trans men, I discovered his name only by accident.
For the third entry, dip back in time to early 20th century Britain, when trans people made the papers as curiosities and heralds of a new age of scientific breakthroughs. Mark Weston was a relentlessly ordinary man who wanted nothing more than to be left alone with his wife; the real treat lies in the linked newspaper editorials written about him and how their optimistic tone compares to modern coverage.
Taking a detour into the realm of myth we can find numerous examples of deities that are now called ‘transgender’, though their shapeshifting bears little resemblance to how trans people live our lives. Ardhanarishvara, an Indian composite of Shiva and Parvati, a male god and a female god, is one such example; like other ‘transgender’ gods, Ardhanarishvara is tied to fertility and balance.
Next, we arrive in Texas in the year 1999, immediately after the state ruled that trans people cannot change their legal status from what they were assigned at birth for the purpose of marriage. Jessica and Robin Wicks, the two halves of a lesbian couple, teamed up with a transgender attorney to make an ironic point by successfully entering into a same-sex marriage on the grounds that one of the two was trans.
Not all of us trans people are inclined toward activism or content to fade into the background. Our achievements impact more than just our own community. For example: Gluck, a lauded mid-20th century British painter, was assigned female at birth and attracted to women but insisted on being referred to only as Gluck, and resigned from an artistic society that credited Gluck as “Miss”.
Finally, I would like to close this month with the introduction of a new Queer-A-Day feature: original interviews with residents of the San Francisco Bay Area, dubbed – in reference to an old epithet – “Sodom by the Sea”. Unlike the Historiography Saturday feature, “Sodom”’s schedule depends entirely on me tracking down interviewees, and so will appear irregularly. The first “Sodom” subject was Apaulo Hart, a tattoo apprentice and burlesque aerial acrobat who identifies as “more of an animal than anything,” but also accepts ‘genderqueer’ and ‘trans man’ as everyday labels.
Tune in next month for more queer history highlights, or just follow the blog for regular updates.
Artwork: Claire Quigley/tumblr
i dont know if youve come across the 19th century politician and trans man, murray hall http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-mystery-of-murray-hall-35612997/#0aycOh3whFlQUpBz.99 ‘One afternoon in mid-January 1901, Murray Hall called a doctor to his home in lower Manhattan, ordered his maid and daughter to stay out of the parlor, opened the buttons of his gray morning coat, and waited to hear how much time he had left. The doctor saw that the cancer on Hall’s left breast had scythed a path clear to the heart; it was only a matter of days. Hall realized his death would set off a national political scandal, and perhaps… Read more »
I hadn’t, but now I know who I’m talking about tonight! Thank you for the pointer!