{"id":3640,"date":"2015-05-27T22:35:22","date_gmt":"2015-05-27T22:35:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=3640"},"modified":"2016-08-31T19:53:54","modified_gmt":"2016-08-31T19:53:54","slug":"whats-in-a-word-the-challenges-of-transgender","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/whats-in-a-word-the-challenges-of-transgender\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s in a word? The challenges of ‘transgender’"},"content":{"rendered":"

KJ Rawson<\/a>, College of the Holy Cross<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Thanks to recent media coverage like the New York Times’ Transgender Today<\/a> series, celebrities like Laverne Cox and television shows like Transparent, most people are becoming increasingly familiar with transgender culture.<\/p>\n

Of course, trans<\/em>-ing gender roles has occurred for centuries. And with help from collaborators from around the world, I\u2019m in the process of building a digital transgender archive to help bring together the long and complicated history of humans who have trans<\/em>-ed gender roles.<\/p>\n

What few realize, however, is that the term transgender<\/em> is new. The relative infancy of the word, along with fact that gender is understood differently in different cultures, presents a significant challenge for historical work in this area.<\/p>\n

The history of transgender<\/em><\/h2>\n

The word transgender<\/em> gained widespread popularity in the 1990s as an umbrella term to describe people who cross over \u2013 or trans \u2013 traditional gender roles.<\/p>\n

Transgender-identified author Virginia Prince is most often credited with coining the term. In 1969, Prince used the term transgenderal<\/em> to distinguish herself from transsexuals, or those who physically alter their bodies through hormones and surgery. Her use of the term transgenderal<\/em> clearly distinguished between trans-ing sex (male or female) versus trans-ing gender (masculine or feminine).<\/p>\n

\u201cI, at least, know the difference between sex and gender,\u201d she wrote<\/a>, \u201cand have simply elected to change the latter and not the former. If a word is necessary, I should be termed a \u2018transgenderal.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Throughout her lifetime, Prince frequently sought recognition for coining the term \u2013 and she regularly attempted to control how the term was being used.<\/p>\n

But in research I conducted with Cristan Williams<\/a>, we found an earlier use of the term: psychiatrist John F Olivan used transgenderism<\/em> in the medical text Sexual Hygiene and Pathology<\/a>, published in 1965<\/a>. Olivan used the term transgenderism<\/em> in a medical sense to indicate an \u201curge for gender (\u2018sex\u2019) change.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s particularly fascinating about this history is not the quest to determine coinage, but that even within its first five years of documented use, the term took on new, even opposite, meanings.<\/p>\n

Currently, transgender<\/em> is generally understood to be a broad category encompassing many gender identities and expressions, including transsexual, genderqueer<\/a> and cross-dresser, among many others.<\/p>\n

As it turns out, Virginia Prince would today be lumped together with the very people she sought to distinguish herself from in the first place.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s at stake with transgender<\/em><\/h2>\n

Given the breadth of experiences and identities the term now includes, transgender<\/em> presents an opportunity for researchers to revisit historical figures, events and movements that may now be included under its umbrella.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
French diplomat Chevalier d’\u00c9on.<\/span>
\nWikimedia Commons<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At the same time, transgender<\/em> presents numerous challenges. It can be applied anachronistically. It can reach too broadly to include those who wouldn\u2019t want to be described by it. And it can minimize the unique identities and experiences of people in different historical moments and cultural contexts.<\/p>\n

Though the term transgender<\/em> has only been used in print for about 50 years, transgender-related practices have existed throughout history.<\/p>\n

For example, in the late 18th century, a male-born French diplomat named Chevalier d’\u00c9on famously identified, dressed and passed as a woman for more than 30 years.<\/p>\n

D’\u00c9on\u2019s life was so notable that in 1913, the English sexologist Havelock Ellis coined the term eonism<\/em> \u2013 in honor of d’\u00c9on \u2013 to describe similar cases of cross-gender living.<\/p>\n

But should d’\u00c9on be considered transgender<\/em> when the identity didn\u2019t exist at the time?<\/p>\n

Take another example: two-spirit<\/em> is a term used by American Indians to describe individuals who possess both masculine and feminine spirits. Two-spirit can clearly be connected with transgender<\/em>, but what\u2019s lost if we include such culturally specific identities under the transgender<\/em> umbrella?<\/p>\n

Of course, throughout human history, a host of other individuals might have been included under a broadened definition of transgender. As these examples show, the encompassing nature of transgender<\/em> helps to bring together the widespread practice of trans-ing gender. But it also risks erasing the historical and cultural specificity of these practices.<\/p>\n

\"\"
A detail from a third-century Roman mosaic depicts Hercules and Omphale wearing traditionally female clothing.<\/span>
\nWikimedia Commons<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Digitizing transgender history<\/h2>\n

These are some of the many challenges we\u2019ve encountered while creating the Digital Transgender Archive<\/a> (DTA), a new project that seeks to create an online hub for transgender-related history.<\/p>\n

This project is a transnational collaboration among more than a dozen archives, including university-based collections, historical societies, nonprofit organizations and private collectors. To improve access to transgender history, the DTA virtually merges these disparate archival collections, digital materials and independent projects.<\/p>\n

In order to begin to address the challenge of using the category of transgender<\/em> to cohere materials without losing sight of their historical and cultural contexts, the DTA treats transgender<\/em> as a practice rather than an identity label. In other words, the archive includes any materials related to trans-ing gender, not merely materials created by or about transgender people.<\/p>\n

We are developing a number of resources to address the imprecision of the term transgender<\/em> with respect to time, culture, and individual identities. For example, we have created an extensive glossary of culturally specific gender identity terms \u2013 such as hijra<\/a> (South Asia), m\u0101h\u016b<\/a> (Hawaii) and travesti<\/a> (South America) \u2013 many of which also appear in the digital materials we are collecting.<\/p>\n

Our hope is that, for the first time, anyone interested in trans-related history will have quick and easy digital access to a wealth of sources and materials.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

KJ Rawson<\/a> is Assistant Professor of English at College of the Holy Cross<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This article was originally published on The Conversation<\/a>.
\nRead the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KJ Rawson, College of the Holy Cross Thanks to recent media coverage like the New York Times’ Transgender Today series, celebrities like Laverne Cox and television shows like Transparent, most people are becoming increasingly familiar with transgender culture. Of course, trans-ing gender roles has occurred for centuries. And with help from collaborators from around the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":7614,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[36],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3640"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3640"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3640\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7615,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3640\/revisions\/7615"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}