How We Became Transgender

By Paula Gaikowski, Femulate Contributing Editor

Last century, back in the 80’s, I’d stop at a corner deli on my way into the office in Morristown, New Jersey. In the back of the store was a collection of adult magazines. My eyes would scan the racks past the racier magazines to my favorite monthly The Tranvestian. I’m almost embarrassed to say the name nowadays. In the 80’s, our sources of information were limited. As indelicate as The Tranvestian sounded, it was tame featuring articles and photos we’d see today on many blogs. Of course, there were ads for all types of clothes, makeovers and other “services.”

I have often said that I knew I was transgender before the term even existed. Back then we were transvestites, although other less flattering terms were often used. We then became crossdressers and that term seems to hold a bit more dignity and didn’t have the connotations that transvestite carried.

Today, transgender has entered the mainstream and is used as an umbrella term for our community at large. I like the term and find it comforting and sometimes, when shopping for clothes or makeup, I’ll tell the sales associate that I am transgender so that they know that I am shopping for myself. This typically puts both of us at ease.

So how did we get here? How did we become transgender? Virginia Prince, the founder and publisher of another magazine, Transvestia, was one of the first advocates and activists in our community and is often credited for coining the term transgender.

However, there is empirical evidence that indicates otherwise. The term transgender was used by psychiatrist John F. Oliven of Columbia University in his 1965 reference work Sexual Hygiene and Pathology. In that work, he wrote that the term that had previously been used was transsexualism.

Other terms that were used in the early days of our community were transsexual, transgenderist and transgenderal. The later two were used by Virginia Prince and members of Triess to describe a person who changed genders, but not their physical sex. (Both Virginia Prince and Triess are not without controversy today, but I believe that both should be applauded for all they did for our community and viewed in the context of their times.)

Virginia Prince first used the term transgender in the December 1969 edition of Transvestia. So it was here that the seed was planted in our community. It then appeared in Practical Handbook of Psychiatry (1974) with references to "transgender surgery" and in the April 1970 issue of TV Guide, which published an article referencing a post-operative transsexual movie character as being transgendered. (Often, the word appeared hyphenated as trans-gender.)

In late 90’s, when Internet usage grew exponentially, the term transgender had already taken root amongst the better informed. When online communities began to organically form on the web, we saw the use of this term increase and become more common, although transsexual, crossdresser, transgenderist, transvestite and sex change were used as well.

Many transgender people rejected the term transsexual citing the fact that gender is separate from sex and sexuality. So nowadays, even outside our community, we hear the term transgender used when referring to a person who has undergone gender transition. It has now become the most often used term and the default term when speaking about gender non-conforming peoples. So when did transgender jump from our community into the public domain?

Time magazine published the “The Transgender Tipping Point” in 2014. A generational shift was starting, Millennials saw a wave of transgender persons in the media like Jazz Jennings, Chase Bono, Janet Mock, Laverne Cox and Caitlyn Jenner.

President Obama carefully included the word transgender in his 2015 State of the Union address. This was the first time a President had used the word in such a high-profile speech. Here we seemed to cross a threshold and gain significant momentum. Social monitoring tools recorded a sharp rise in the occurrence of the word by journalists, entertainers and politicians. A this point the word entered the common vocabulary and you could use the word in everyday conversation.

And that, my sisters, is how we became transgender.

Wearing Madeleine

Femulator Terri as she appeared in Transvestia in 1961