Transgender history in the United States

People dressing and living differently from the gender roles typical of their sex assigned at birth and contributing to various aspects of American history and culture have been documented from the 17th century to the present day.

[5] One of the first documented inhabitants of the American colonies to challenge binary gender roles was Thomas(ine) Hall, a servant who, in the 1620s, alternately dressed in both men's and women's clothing.

Her dingy ears were decked with a pair of snow white earrings, her head was ornamented with a wig of beautiful curly locks, and on it was a gilded comb, which was half hid amid the luxuriant crop of wool.

[26] In 1895 a group of self-described androgynes in New York organized a club called the Cercle Hermaphroditos, based on their wish "to unite for defense against the world's bitter persecution".

June was assigned male at birth and referred to himself with he/him pronouns throughout his memoirs, but said he had desired all his life to become a woman, and chose to have an orchiectomy (removal of the testicles) in order to help feminize his body.

[38] In 1952, using Virginia Prince's correspondence network for its initial subscription list, a handful of other transgender people in Southern California launched Transvestia: The Journal of the American Society for Equality in Dress, which published two issues.

Prince believed that the binary gender system harmed both men and women by keeping them from their full human potential, and she considered cross-dressing to be one means of fixing this.

[41][42] The work of the EEF would be continued by psychologist Paul Walker in the late 1970s, in the 1980s by Sister Mary Elizabeth Clark and Jude Patton, and in the 1990s by Dallas Denny.

[43] In the late 1960s in New York, Mario Martino founded the Labyrinth Foundation Counseling Service, which was the first transgender community-based organization that specifically addressed the needs of transsexual men.

In the process of offering legal support for the teens, local activist and president of the homophile organization the Janus Society, Clark Polak, was also arrested.

The Janus Society said the protests were successful in preventing further arrests and the action was deemed "the first sit-in of its kind in the history of the United States" by Drum magazine.

Gender-nonconforming and trans activists including Marsha P. Johnson, Zazu Nova and Jackie Hormona were confirmed to be "in the vanguard" of the rioting on the first night.

GenderPAC organized the first National Gender Lobby Day on Capitol Hill the following year, with help from activists Phyllis Frye and Jane Fee.

[87] Also in 2004 the book The Man Who Would Be Queen: The Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism by the highly controversial researcher J. Michael Bailey was announced as a finalist in the Transgender category of the 2003 Lambda Literary Awards.

[119] In 2003 she organized the first school-wide seminar at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College which addressed the psychological, legal, and religious issues affecting people who are transsexual or intersex.

In 2010 Amanda Simpson became the first openly transgender presidential appointee in America when she was appointed as senior technical adviser in the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security.

[146][147][148] Later in 2014 Cox became the first openly transgender person to be nominated for an Emmy in an acting category: Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for her role as Sophia Burset in Orange Is the New Black.

[170][171] Three groups – the Girl Scouts, the North American Gay Amateur Athletic Alliance, and the Episcopal Church in the United States – announced their acceptance of transgender people in this decade.

[174] Another significant change for transgender people occurred in 2013 when the fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) was released.

Then on October 4 of that year, the Civil Division of the Department of Justice filed a motion to dismiss the amended complaint in Jane Doe v. Trump (about the new policy) and to oppose the application for a preliminary injunction, arguing instead "that challenge is premature several times over" and that Secretary Mattis's Interim Guidance, issued on September 14, 2017, protected currently serving transgender personnel from involuntary discharge or denial of reenlistment.

[187] Also in 2017, the Trump administration, through the Department of Justice, reversed the Obama-era policy which used Title VII of the Civil Rights Act to protect transgender employees from discrimination.

[213] In 2016, guidance was issued by the Departments of Justice and Education stating that schools which receive federal money must treat a student's gender identity as their sex (for example, in regard to bathrooms).

[219][220] In 2012, Kylar Broadus, founder of the Trans People of Color Coalition of Columbia, Missouri, spoke to the Senate in favor of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.

In 2017, the Trump administration, through the Department of Justice, reversed the Obama-era policy which used Title VII of the Civil Rights Act to protect transgender employees from discrimination.

She now practices primarily in Burlingame, California, and initiated transgender surgical training programs for vaginoplasty in Tel Aviv, Israel at Sheba Hospital (2014), at Mt.

[228][229] In 2009, America's professional association of endocrinologists established best practices for transgender children that included prescribing puberty-suppressing drugs to preteens followed by hormone therapy beginning at about age 16.

[230] In 2012, the American Psychiatric Association issued official position statements supporting the care and civil rights of transgender and gender non-conforming individuals.

[237] In 2014 the American Medical Association adopted a policy stating that transgender people should not be required to undergo genital surgery in order to update legal identification documents, including birth certificates.

[251][252][253][254][255][256][257][258][full citation needed] The events of the case, including both criminal trials, were portrayed in a television movie, A Girl Like Me: The Gwen Araujo Story.

[260] In 2017, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that he had instructed federal authorities to review murders of transgender people that occurred recently, to see if they were hate crimes or if there was one person or group responsible for them.