touching trans history
july 28, 2022
i studied history and maintain a historical project (about + dedicated to Lou Sullivan), so i spend a lot of time reflecting on the past and, frankly, people like me who've lived and died. reading about these individuals and their communities has a striking, often emotional effect on me. i'll sit down and page thru Lou's collected journals or some old-ass clinical notes from a transphobic psychologist and feel joy welling up in my chest. or maybe it's love. intimate familiarity. reading about the trials and tribulations of historical trans people is cathartic and affirming: a reminder that yeah, i'm not the only one. that trans people have been there, done that.
Lou's self-discovery process mirrors much of mine, like when he writes about feeling lost and confused, i know exactly what he means. i've also been there, lived a dissociative teenagerhood that felt more like a fugue state than a flesh and blood experience. the trans person being scrutinized by the shrink, despite having neither support nor validation from medical authorities, persisted and survived however they could. even though the notes describe someone who's delusional or whatever, i know that the patient knew better, knew themselves, knew their desires. there's power in knowing.
going back further and further, before hrt, before modern medicine and pathology, makes me almost nostalgic for a past i didn't directly experience. won't lie, trans and gender-nonconforming have often been through hell and back, especially in the context of christian and western socities. but we still existed, we still thrived. i won't pine to retvrn to some mythical past where we were worshipped as god-like beings or whatever (i don't like hierarchies, and with worship comes its own kettle of dehumanizing fish), but to see all the ways we transitioned is inspiring in and of itself. i'm keen to learn as much as i can about modes of transition, be they through injections of hormones or a quick ritualistic snip or donning the robes of a monk and ascending to maleness. (my pet hypothesis that i've got no immediate evidence for is that afab people in early christian societies used spirituality to embody a male gender. one of the martyr Perpetua's visions involved becoming male; it would not be a great stretch to assume that believers that particularly revered her may have "become male" in their own ways. one day i'll dedicate more time to researching this idea.)
the way trans people have navigated and solidified our identities--and the way those identities are perceived--is dynamic and ever-changing. our history also proves that trans people are nothing if not resourceful. we've always helped each other through sharing experiences, discussing gender and whatever the hell it is; by and large, we've always uplifted each other. i can point to mentors i've personally known who provided the foundation and grounding i needed to take the leap and Live, and my mentors had their mentors, who had their mentors, and so on for generations. we've always been here, we've always found each other.
my point is, our history matters because it influences our present. the knowledge that transition has existed for as long as gender (in all its incarnations and definitions) empowers us as trans people to persist. that transition is a possibility, no matter how we choose to go about it.
perhaps this is why transphobic journalists and pundits seek to push the idea that transsexuality is a recent "invention," the work of a society gone too far and too willing to experiment with surgeries and hormones. perhaps this is why said writers want to cis-wash and erase our trans ancestors by misgendering them, or pretending their identities were costumes. a decades-long drag show, a disguise to deceive the institutions that would otherwise deny them based on sex. besides the fact that this is lazy, inaccurate hiftorical "refearch" and that anyone claiming it's ok to misgender historical trans individuals ought to have their qualifications nullified and be ousted from schools that boast academic rigor, it's also a wily attempt to, well, write us out of the historical record--and therefore reality.
before medical transition was a possibility (in the contemporary sense; cultures have used castration and herbal regimines to transition for like, thousands of years now, but i digress), trans people still lived as our authentic selves. we won't go away because we've always been here. again, there is power in recognizing that reality, and the power we do hold? makes transphobes so scared. because it proves they're wrong, it proves that their bigotry can not and will not stop us from existing. they can only hope that the cudgel of ignorance will be enough.
and of course, it won't. as long as trans people live, so does our history. we persist through our communities. the experiences and knowledge of our mentors and ancestors redden our blood and nourish our selves.