Harry Benjamin was a German-American endocrinologist and sexologist, widely known for his clinical work with transgender people.
A trans man is a man who was assigned female at birth. Trans men have a male gender identity, and many trans men undergo medical and social transition to alter their appearance in a way that aligns with their gender identity or alleviates gender dysphoria.
International Foundation for Gender Education (IFGE) is an American non-profit transgender advocacy organization. The foundation is devoted to "overcoming the intolerance of transvestitism and transsexualism brought about by widespread ignorance."
Jamison "James" Green is a prominent transgender rights activist, author, and educator focused on policy work.
Reed Erickson was an American transgender man and philanthropist that, according to sociology specialist Aaron H. Devor, largely informed "almost every aspect of work being done in the 1960s and 1970s in the field of gender affirmation in the US and, to a lesser degree, in other countries."
A transgender person is someone whose gender identity differs from that typically associated with the sex they were assigned at birth.
Louis Graydon Sullivan was an American author and activist known for his work on behalf of trans men. He was perhaps the first transgender man to publicly identify as gay, and is largely responsible for the modern understanding of sexual orientation and gender identity as distinct, unrelated concepts.
A transsexual person is someone who experiences a gender identity that is inconsistent with their assigned sex, and desires to permanently transition to the sex or gender with which they identify, usually seeking medical assistance to help them align their body with their identified sex or gender.
Dallas Denny is a writer, editor, behavior analyst, and transgender rights activist.
Susan O'Neal Stryker, best known as Susan Stryker, is an American professor, historian, author, filmmaker, and theorist whose work focuses on gender and sexuality and trans realities. She is a professor of Gender and Women's Studies, former director of the Institute for LGBT Studies, and founder of the Transgender Studies Initiative at the University of Arizona. Stryker is the author of several books and a founding figure of transgender studies as well as a leading scholar of transgender history.
Transgender studies, also called trans studies or trans* studies, is an interdisciplinary field of academic research dedicated to the study of gender identity, gender expression, and gender embodiment, as well as to the study of various issues of relevance to transgender and gender variant populations. Interdisciplinary subfields of transgender studies include applied transgender studies, transgender history, transgender literature, transgender media studies, transgender anthropology and archaeology, transgender psychology, and transgender health. The research theories within transgender studies focus on cultural presentations, political movements, social organizations and the lived experience of various forms of gender nonconformity. The discipline emerged in the early 1990s in close connection to queer theory. Non-transgender-identified peoples are often also included under the "trans" umbrella for transgender studies, such as intersex people, crossdressers, drag artists, third gender individuals, and genderqueer people.
Rupert Raj is a Canadian trans activist and a transgender man. His work since his own gender transition in 1971 has been recognized by several awards, as well as his inclusion in the National Portrait Collection of The ArQuives: Canada's LGBTQ2+ Archives.
The Transgender Archives at the University of Victoria is the "largest transgender archive in the world".
Morty Diamond is a filmmaker, artist, performer, and writer from the United States who has worked alongside the LGBT community for over 14 years. Diamond has written and edited three books, which all focus on transgender topics, and has also made two films which explore LGBT subjects.
The Zenith Foundation was founded by author and activist Stephanie Castle in 1992 in Vancouver, Canada, along with Christine Burnham, and Patricia Diewold, a clinical psychologist from the Provincial Gender Clinic at Vancouver General Hospital. The foundation started out as a support and advocacy group for transgender rights and also has an active focus on publishing educational pamphlets for the transgender community.
Ariadne "Ari" Kane is a crossdresser, activist, educator, and one of the founders of the Fantasia Fair. She runs Theseus Counseling Services which specializes in gender issues and remains open currently in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Transmedicalism is the idea that being transgender is primarily a medical issue related to the incongruence between an individual's assigned sex at birth and their gender identity, characterized by gender dysphoria. There are divides and debates within the transmedicalist community on the exact definition of who is or is not transgender. Many transmedicalists believe individuals who identify as transgender without experiencing gender dysphoria or desiring to undergo a medical transition through methods such as hormone replacement therapy or sex reassignment surgery are not genuinely transgender. They may also exclude those who identify themselves as non-binary from the trans label.
Chase Joynt is a Canadian filmmaker, writer, video artist, actor, and professor. He attracted acclaim as co-director with Aisling Chin-Yee of the documentary film No Ordinary Man (2020), and as director of the film Framing Agnes (2022). He won two awards at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival for his work on the latter.
The Chair in Transgender Studies is the world's first research chair focusing on the study of transgender individuals, issues, and history. It is housed at the University of Victoria, located in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Unlike any other university department chair at the University of Victoria, the Chair in Transgender Studies is self-funded through philanthropy and private donations. The chair is unique in that it does not grant degrees, but instead works with both community and academic communities to further the advancement of transgender studies. Aaron Devor, the inaugural and current chair, works with researchers, community members, academics, and advocates to advance the study of trans scholarship. The chair focuses on four pillars: original research, continued scholarship, maintenance and growth of the Transgender Archives, and organization of Canada's largest international transgender conference, Moving Trans History Forward.
Moving Trans History Forward is a series of interdisciplinary, international, and intergenerational conferences held in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, at the University of Victoria, hosted by the Chair in Transgender Studies. The conferences discuss trans history and activism, and are both academic and open to the public. The conferences also explore new trans research and the issues that impact trans, non-binary, Two-spirit, and other gender nonconforming (GNC) people.
