Christine Jorgensen, born George William Jorgensen Jr., was an American actress, singer, recording artist, and transgender activist. A trans woman, she was the first person to become widely known in the United States for having sex reassignment surgery.
The Compton's Cafeteria riot occurred in August 1966 in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. The riot was a response to the violent and constant police harassment of trans people, particularly trans women, and drag queens. The incident was one of the first LGBTQ-related riots in United States history, preceding the more famous 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City. It marked the beginning of transgender activism in San Francisco.
Elliott R. Blackstone was a sergeant in the San Francisco Police Department, known as a longtime advocate for the lesbian, gay and transgender community in that city.
The Tenderloin is a neighborhood in downtown San Francisco, in the flatlands on the southern slope of Nob Hill, situated between the Union Square shopping district to the northeast and the Civic Center office district to the southwest. Encompassing about 50 square blocks, it is historically bounded on the north by Geary Street, on the east by Mason Street, on the south by Market Street and on the west by Van Ness Avenue. The northern boundary with Lower Nob Hill has historically been set at Geary Boulevard.
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.
The transgender rights movement is a movement to promote the legal status of transgender people and to eliminate discrimination and violence against transgender people regarding housing, employment, public accommodations, education, and health care. A major goal of transgender activism is to allow changes to identification documents to conform with a person's current gender identity without the need for gender-affirming surgery or any medical requirements, which is known as gender self-identification. It is part of the broader LGBT rights movements.
This article addresses the history of transgender people in the United States from prior to Western contact until the present. There are a few historical accounts of transgender people that have been present in the land now known as the United States at least since the early 1600s. Before Western contact, some Native American tribes had third gender people whose social roles varied from tribe to tribe. 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. In the 20th and 21st centuries, advances in gender-affirming surgery as well as transgender activism have influenced transgender life and the popular perception of transgender people in the United States.
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.
Finocchio'sClub was a former nightclub and bar in operation from 1936 to 1999 in North Beach, San Francisco, California. The club started as a speakeasy called the 201 Club in 1929 located at 406 Stockton Street. In 1933, with the repeal of prohibition, the club moved upstairs and started to offer female impersonation acts; after police raids in 1936 the club relocated to the larger 506 Broadway location. Finocchio's night club opened June 15, 1936 and was located in San Francisco, California, above Enrico's Cafe at 506 Broadway Street in North Beach.
My Transsexual Summer is a British documentary-style reality series about seven transgender people in different stages of transition. For five weekends in the summer of 2011, they stay together in a large holiday home in Bedfordshire, where they meet and help each other with some of the struggles that transgender people face. Between these weekend retreats, they go back to their lives and real-world challenges.
Tamara Ching is an American trans woman and San Francisco Bay Area transgender activist. Also known as the "God Mother of Polk [Street]", she is an advocate for trans, HIV, and sex work-related causes.
Felicia Elizondo was an American transgender woman with a long history of activism on behalf of the LGBT community. She was a regular at Gene Compton's Cafeteria in San Francisco during the time of the Compton's Cafeteria riot, a historic LGBT community uprising.
Living Smile Vidya, or Smiley, is an Indian actress, assistant director, writer, and trans and Dalit rights activist from Chennai.
Janetta Louise Johnson is an American transgender rights activist, human rights activist, prison abolitionist, and transgender woman. She is the Executive Director of the TGI Justice Project. She co-founded the non-profit TAJA's Coalition in 2015. Along with Honey Mahogany and Aria Sa'id, Johnson is a co-founder of The Transgender District, established in 2017. Johnson's work is primarily concerned about the rights and safety of incarcerated and formerly-incarcerated transgender and gender-non-conforming people. She believes that the abolition of police and the prison industrial complex will help support the safety of transgender people, and she identifies as an abolitionist.
Donna Personna is a transgender rights activist and fine art artist, who focuses in photography, painting, and mixed media. Personna was friends with The Cockettes and she played a part in Elevator Girls in Bondage. Personna co-wrote a play about the Compton Cafeteria riot, one of the first recorded LGBT-related riots in United States history, and marking the beginning of transgender activism in San Francisco.
The following is a timeline of transgender history. Transgender history dates back to the first recorded instances of transgender individuals in ancient civilizations. However, the word transgenderism did not exist until 1965 when coined by psychiatrist John F. Oliven of Columbia University in his 1965 reference work Sexual Hygiene and Pathology; the timeline includes events and personalities that may be viewed as transgender in the broadest sense, including third gender and other gender-variant behavior, including ancient or modern precursors from the historical record.
Bárbara "Soraya" Santiago Solla was a pioneer of the transgender community in Puerto Rico as well as the first person in Puerto Rico to change the gender designation on their birth certificate following gender reassignment surgery.
Louise Lawrence (1912–1976) was an American transgender activist, artist, writer and lecturer. During the mid-20th century, she organized a network of gender non-conforming people across the US and abroad, and advocated for transgender issues. She was an early founder of the magazine, Transvestia. Academic and historian Susan Stryker wrote, "If there is an unheralded founder of the transgender community in the United States, it’s Louise Lawrence.".
The San Francisco Trans March is an annual gathering and protest march in San Francisco, California, that takes place on the Friday night of Pride weekend, the last weekend of June. It is a trans and gender non-conforming and inclusive event in the same spirit of the original gay pride parades and dyke marches. It is one of the few large annual transgender events in the world and has likely been the largest transgender event since its inception in June 2004. The purpose of the event is to increase visibility, activism and acceptance of all gender-variant people.
