{"id":1303,"date":"2018-03-06T21:40:38","date_gmt":"2018-03-06T21:40:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thestandardps.com\/?p=1303"},"modified":"2018-03-06T21:40:38","modified_gmt":"2018-03-06T21:40:38","slug":"transgender-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thestandardps.com\/?p=1303","title":{"rendered":"Transgender History"},"content":{"rendered":"

Always Overbooked<\/strong><\/p>\n

By Terri Schlichenmeyer<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It had to start somewhere.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Someone had to make the first step, to pave the way, to stick a fork into the ground and say, \u201cHere, now.\u201d Someone had to be the first so that others could follow, and in the newly updated book \u201cTransgender History\u201d by Susan Stryker,<\/strong> you\u2019ll see where we go next.<\/p>\n

Opening a history book with a chapter on terms and words might seem odd but, says Susan Stryker, \u201cremarkable changes\u201d over the last decade demand it. Thus begins this book, with new language for what is an old lifestyle.<\/p>\n

Indeed, America\u2019s first recorded \u201cintersex\u201d individual was Thomas(ine) Hall, who lived in the 1620s, \u201csometimes as a man and sometimes as a woman.\u201d Seventy years later, however, the colony of Massachusetts made \u201ccross-dressing\u201d illegal and it spread: by the 1850s, many U.S. cities had ordinances against dressing in clothing normally worn by the opposite sex.<\/p>\n

And yet, it was hard to stop people who wanted to dress as or fully transition to another gender. Throughout the 1800s, records show that women dressed as men for battle, cross-dressers braved the frontier, men ran away from their families to be true to their feminine selves, and Native American cultures embraced transgender people. Says Stryker, after anesthesia was invented and surgeries were safer, \u201cindividuals began approaching doctors to request surgical alteration of\u2026 parts of their bodies.\u201d<\/p>\n

For a time, then, the movement was relatively quiet \u2013 by necessity, as the Nazis proved when they torched Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld\u2019s Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin \u2013 until American Christine Jorgensen \u201cburst onto the scene\u201d in late 1952 when she traveled to Copenhagen for trans surgery. Her ensuing fame didn\u2019t signal full acceptance for trans people, but it was a start: Riots in 1959 led to activism in the 1960s, and post-Stonewall groups consolidated to lend support and work through \u201cdifficult decades\u201d of the \u201870s, \u201880s, and the AIDS crisis. Today, says Stryker, though we live in interesting times of Trump and turmoil, the news is heartening. Millennials and \u201cpost-Baby Boomers\u201d have expressed more acceptance of \u201ctrans-gender as part of the \u2018anti-heteronormative\u2019 mix.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though \u201cTransgender History\u201d is a revised edition of a book first published a decade ago, it has a fresh feel thanks to that which author Susan Stryker has added. The first chapter, somewhat of a dictionary, schools readers on new ways of talking about LGBTQ issues and individuals, while the last chapter of trans history brings readers up to the present, includes topics of politics, potties, and celebrity.<\/p>\n

What makes it unusual is that, though it\u2019s not always chronological, it\u2019s breezy and casually readable. There\u2019s no stuffiness here, and no air of the scholarly: Stryker makes this history accessible for people who want a story and not a textbook.<\/p>\n

And so, this book is a pleasant surprise. It\u2019s easy to read, not overly wordy, and there are a just-right number of illustrations here for a reader\u2019s enjoyment. For anyone who wants a basic, yet lively, overview of trans life in America, \u201cTransgender History\u201d is a great start.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cTransgender History: The Roots of Today\u2019s Revolution, Revised Edition\u201d by Susan Stryker c.2008, 2017, Seal Press $17.99 \/ $23.49 Canada            303 pages<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Always Overbooked By Terri Schlichenmeyer   It had to start somewhere.   Someone had to make the first step, to pave the way, to stick a fork into the ground and say, \u201cHere, now.\u201d Someone had to be the first so that others could follow, and in the newly updated book \u201cTransgender History\u201d by Susan Stryker, you\u2019ll see where we go next. Opening a history book with a chapter on terms and words might seem odd but, says Susan Stryker, \u201cremarkable changes\u201d over the last decade demand it. Thus begins this book, with new language for what is an old lifestyle. Indeed, America\u2019s first recorded \u201cintersex\u201d individual was Thomas(ine) Hall, who lived in the 1620s, \u201csometimes as a man and sometimes as a woman.\u201d Seventy years later, however, the colony of Massachusetts made \u201ccross-dressing\u201d illegal and it spread: by the 1850s, many U.S. cities had ordinances against dressing in clothing normally worn by the opposite sex. And yet, it was hard to stop people who wanted to dress as or fully transition to another gender. Throughout the 1800s, records show that women dressed as men for battle, cross-dressers braved the frontier, men ran away from their families to be true […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1304,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[355],"tags":[368,1744,1743,1742,1741,367,1745],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thestandardps.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1303"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thestandardps.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thestandardps.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thestandardps.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thestandardps.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1303"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thestandardps.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1303\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1305,"href":"https:\/\/www.thestandardps.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1303\/revisions\/1305"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thestandardps.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thestandardps.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thestandardps.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thestandardps.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}