Actually pretty interesting. I think we're starting to creep up on the actual numbers, as far as you can measure such a thing. I think comphet keeps a lot of people who would otherwise fall somewhere on the bi/pan spectrum from ever experimenting and realizing it about themelves, and I bet that population is actually quite large. As far as transness goes, I would be willing to believe a number within the realm of ~3% to even 5%. I think further complicating this whole thing is that human sexuality and gender identity is a lot more nebulous than the very rigid, medically-originated terminology we use implies. A lot of the identity labels we use (homosexual, transsexual/transgender, etc) were originally medical diagnoses that were later transposed onto cultural identities, which carries a lot of baggage that I think has been left unaddressed, such as the rigidity of their definition, but that's probably for a post for another time. Anyway, just thought it was neat neat, especially the state queerness leaderboards.
I am also patient and willing to wait
I see, though, I see. I'm aware of the concepts you discuss, (albeit I was baffled when I first saw "Uranian" anywhere) in fact a New-York-Times-bestselling author planted in my mind long ago that "transgender" is a term coined by the american CDC and is therefore scuffed as fuck. The medicalisation does make me frown a bit, although I also realise that it's probably at least 10% due to hormone replacement therapy as a medical thing, which is a recent development right? Not every day I see someone cite Jules Gil-Peterson though. Mostly this sounds like I have a lot (more) cool reading to do.
I know this but have never seen it put just like this, I think it rocks.
Alright well good halfbaked post, thank you for posting. Very chill.
Depends on how you define recent. The earliest studies on the effects of "cross-sex" hormones happened over a century ago. I think there was some stuff done before him, but the big name in that area was an Austrian doctor named Eugen Steinach. In the early 1900s/1910s he experimented with implanting rats and guinea pigs with ovaries (into males) and testes (into females) and observed the corresponding physical and behavior changes. Sex hormones had not been isolated at this point, so it was only understood that these sex organs contained what they termed "glandular juices" which was having these effects. In 1923 he produced Der Steinachfilm (trans. The Steinach Film) which, along with a 68 page pamphlet published in 1920, popularized his discoveries to the lay public. These results were interpreted in some crank ways, like the belief among some people, including Steinach himself, that homosexuality could be "cured" by giving gay men a testicular implant to boost their "male glandular juices" (testosterone), but the trans implications were picked up by other people.^[Robert Beachy, Gay Berlin: Birthplace of a Modern Identity, (Random House, 2014), 173-175.] Apparently a trans woman read about these developments and wanted the prodecure for herself, quoting from Gay Berlin with editted pronouns,
There are other reports of people receiving a very primitive version of HRT around this time as well. In 1916 a 36 year old person known only as "Herr. A" in the historical record approached a Berlin doctor named Max Marcuse about an orchiectomy and hormone treatment. Marcuse denied the request for surgery on the grounds that he deemed the patient mentally ill, but gave them an unspecified "ovarian preparation" which seemed to calm their distress. One of the first surgical sex reassignments was undertaken in stages over the course of 1920-1921 on a 23 year old military officer. They received an orchiectomy, a primitive sort of vulvoplasty while keeping the penis intact, and an implanted ovary for hormone treatment. Though this person later requested the reversal of some of these surgical procedures and then lived out the rest of their life as a man.^[Ibid., 176-177]
According to Julian Gill-Peterson, synthetic hormones were available in the United States by the mid-1930s, though trans people's access to them were obviously extremely difficult, if not impossible, though not for a lack of trying. Gill-Peterson relates a story of a trans man known to us only as "Bernard" who was well read in the sexological developments of the time and attempted to convince doctors at John Hopkins Hospital that he was actually intersex and needed surgery and hormones to "correct" his supposed birth defect. Unfortunately he was ultimately unsuccessful, though he did manage to fool the first doctor he saw, but that doctor sought a second opinion and Bernard's ploy was seen through by the second one.^[Julian Gill-Peterson, Histories of the Transgender Child (University of Minnesota Press, 2018), 83-85.] So that all said, the most primitive forms of HRT have been around for just over a century now, and synthetic HRT has been possible but not nessicarily available since roughly the middle last century. I don't have any citation for this but I remember hearing way back in the day that spironolactone was originally prescribed as a blood pressure medication for men in the 1950s until they all started growing breasts because of its anti-androgen effects. So the past 70 or 80 years have mostly been about increasing access moreso than novel developments in HRT.
Yeah 19th century is what I mean by "recent", as in there weren't people in ancient Greece or whatever doing the horse urine thing. Relatively new.
Some of this early stuff I'd heard of from looking into Lili Elbe and related things, but... damn I'd never heard about that 23yo military officer, that's unusual lore. The story of "Bernard" is also new to me. Ty for the info, I had Gay Berlin on my TBR but not Histories of the Transgender Child.
If you want to bend the definition to include orchiectomies then gender-bendy people have been doing those in religious rituals across all sorts of cultures since the Bronze Age or even earlier. Those people must've been fucking gnarly to just tank that kind of pain without modern opiods or anesthesia. Our trans ancestors were of a different breed, I can't even imagine.
Anyway, always glad to share trans history! Truly, we have always been here, and I desperately wish more people knew that.
One of my favourite ways to hold cis people at conversational gunpoint is to ask them about Elagabalus lol
Now that I read the rest of your comments in this thread, I think you probably should make an effort at Homosexuality.
And to further derail this thread from days ago, since I see you are appreciating Jules Gill-Peterson, I am very curious about this conversation I heard with her. I was thinking of making a post about it, maybe it doesn't fit in here. I am not intending to make you feel like cornered or pressured.
In this interview conducted by Morgan M Page starting around 55mins she is talking about her new book, which is a criticism of "transgender politics". She says that transgender is a concept created by elites (particularly trans* elites) which uses identity politics to repress and control trans* people. The whole concept of transgender is regressive and harmful. That it explains things such as the hostility between trans people and medicine. It's a short, informal discussion so the ideas are not well developed here, presumably in the book they will be.
I don't know what her underlying political orientation is so I am cautious of making inferences regarding the gaps one way or the other. I don't know if this idea is generally circulating anywhere or if she's really just gone off in her own direction. I have heard an approximation of this argument before but never strongly made, often sounding more like pettiness or a kind of inverted respectability politics.