The National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) is a nonprofit social equality organization founded in 2003 by transgender activist Mara Keisling in Washington, D.C. The organization works primarily in the areas of policy advocacy and media activism with the aim of advancing the equality of transgender people in the United States. Among other transgender-related issue areas, NCTE focuses on discrimination in employment, access to public accommodations, fair housing, identity documents, hate crimes and violence, criminal justice reform, federal research surveys and the Census, and health care access.
Coagula is a character from DC Comics' Doom Patrol series, the first transgender superhero by the publisher. Created by Rachel Pollack in response to other poorly written trans comic characters, the lesbian Coagula obtained her powers—to coagulate and dissolve material—from having sex with Doom Patrol member, Rebis. An actively-written character from September 1993 through February 1995, Coagula has cameoed in other comics as recently as 2022.
Ottawa Capital Pride is an annual LGBTQ pride event, festival, and parade held in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, and Gatineau, Quebec, from mid to late August. Established in 1986, it has evolved into a 7 to 9-day celebration of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community, advocating for equality, diversity, and inclusion in the National Capital Region. The festival offers bilingual events in English and French, known as 'Capital Pride / Fierté dans la capitale', seamlessly blending local pride with national importance.
A transgender person is someone whose gender identity differs from that typically associated with the sex they were assigned at birth.
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.
Paisley Currah is political scientist and author, known for his work on the transgender rights movement. His book, Sex Is as Sex Does: Governing Transgender Identity examines the politics of sex classification in the United States. He is a professor of political science and women's and gender studies at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He was born in Ontario, Canada, received a B.A. from Queen's University at Kingston, Ontario and an M.A and Ph.D. in government from Cornell University. He lives in Brooklyn.
Laverne Cox is an American actress and LGBT advocate. She rose to prominence with her role as Sophia Burset on the Netflix series Orange Is the New Black, becoming the first transgender person to be nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award in an acting category, and the first to be nominated for an Emmy Award since composer Angela Morley in 1990. In 2015, she won a Daytime Emmy Award in Outstanding Special Class Special as executive producer for Laverne Cox Presents: The T Word, making her the first trans woman to win the award. In 2017, she became the first transgender person to play a transgender series regular on U.S. broadcast TV as Cameron Wirth on CBS's Doubt.
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.
Feminist views on transgender topics vary widely.
International Transgender Day of Visibility is an annual event occurring every March 31 since 2009 dedicated to celebrating transgender people and raising awareness of discrimination faced by transgender people worldwide, as well as a celebration of their contributions to society. The first International Transgender Day of Visibility was held on March 31, 2009. It has since been spearheaded by the U.S.-based youth advocacy organization Trans Student Educational Resources.
TERF is an acronym for trans-exclusionary radical feminist. First recorded in 2008, the term TERF was originally used to distinguish transgender-inclusive feminists from a group of radical feminists who reject the position that trans women are women, reject the inclusion of trans women in women's spaces, and oppose transgender rights legislation. Trans-inclusive feminists assert that these ideas and positions are transphobic and discriminatory towards transgender people. The use of the term TERF has since broadened to include reference to people with trans-exclusionary views who are not necessarily involved with radical feminism. In the 2020s, the term "trans-exclusionary radical feminism" is used synonymously with or overlaps with "gender-critical feminism".
Sarah Elizabeth McBride is an American activist and politician who is the U.S. representative-elect for Delaware's at-large congressional district. She has been a Democratic member of the Delaware Senate since January 2021. She was previously the national press secretary of the Human Rights Campaign. She won in the November 2020 election in the 1st Delaware State Senate district. As the first openly transgender state senator in the country, she is the highest-ranking transgender elected official in United States history.
Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, often referred to as Miss Major, is an American author, activist, and community organizer for transgender rights. She has participated in activism and community organizing for a range of causes, and served as the first executive director for the Transgender Gender Variant Intersex Justice Project.
The Transgender American Veterans Association (TAVA) is an advocacy group for transgender veterans from the US military. The Don't ask don't tell policy did not apply to transgender members of the United States military. The group was founded in 2003 by a former Navy and US Army servicepersons.
Elisa Rae Shupe is a retired United States Army soldier who in 2016 became the first person in the United States to obtain legal recognition of a non-binary gender. In 2019, she released a statement explaining that she had "returned to [her] male birth sex." In 2022, she published a statement reclaiming her trans identity and condemning the anti-trans movement due to her story being used to push conversion therapy.
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.
Transgender genocide or trans genocide is a term used by some scholars and activists to describe an elevated level of systematic discrimination and violence against transgender people.
Tre'vell Anderson is an American journalist, critic, editor, and podcaster. They previously worked for the publications Los Angeles Times, Xtra, and Out. They co-host the podcasts What A Day and FANTI. Anderson received an NAACP Image Award and two GLAAD Media Award nominations for their writing.
Trans Rights Now Collective (TRNC) is a Dalit-Bahujan-Adivasi-centered collective of transgender individuals in India which was founded by Grace Banu.
