Transgender Political Organizing

Transgender people, individuals whose self-identification and/or expression challenges traditional notions of “male” and “female,” have been formally organizing since the early 1950s, following the international news coverage accorded to Christine Jorgensen for being the first person from the United States publicly known to have had a “sex change.” With transgender people as a whole becoming increasingly visible during the past 50 years, particularly since the early 1990s, political organizing in transgender communities has greatly expanded and diversified. The proliferation of local groups throughout the United States has led to the development of several national organizations and the growth of movements for transgender rights and for an end to violence against transgender people.

Many of the early organizations represented particular segments of the transgender community. In 1952, a small group of male-to-female (MTF) cross-dressers in Southern California published a newsletter, Transvestia. The newsletter lasted only two issues but was revived in 1960 by Virginia Prince and became a catalyst for MTF cross-dressers to acknowledge themselves and find each other. The following year, Prince formed the “Hose and Heels Club” in Los Angeles, the first known U.S. support group for MTF cross-dressers. It gave rise to several chapters and in 1976 combined with another cross-dressing organization to form Tri-Ess, the Society for the Second Self. As of 2007, Tri-Ess had more than 30 chapters in the United States.

The first formal organizations for transsexuals were also established in the late 1960s and early 1970s. A riot against the police by MTF patrons of Compton's, a 24-hour cafeteria in San Francisco's Tenderloin district in 1966, demonstrated the need for sustained community action, and a local group of MTFs founded COG (Conversion Our Goal, or Change: Our Goal) the following year. Although short-lived, the group laid the groundwork for other California-based organizations, including the National Transsexual Counseling Unit and the Transsexual Action Organization. Similarly, the resistance of transgender “street queens” at the Stonewall riots in New York City in 1969 contributed to the formation of STAR (Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries), by Sylvia Rivera, and the Queens Liberation Front, by Lee Brewster.

[Page 848]Mirroring larger societal changes, the transsexual organizations founded in the late 1970s and 1980s were more focused on support and socializing than on protest and militant activism. This more inward turn was influenced by the rise of a transphobic feminist politic that sought to exclude MTF transsexuals from the women's movement, based on the belief that they were not “real” women. The development of transsexual groups in cities beyond the more progressive U.S. coasts also reflected and contributed to a greater emphasis on personal support.

With the exception of the Labyrinth Foundation Counseling Service, founded by Mario Martino in the late 1960s in New York City, the early transsexual organizations had few female-to-male (FTM) members and rarely addressed their needs. This situation began to change in 1986 when Lou Sullivan founded an FTM support group in San Francisco that grew into FTM International, the leading advocacy organization for FTMs. Twenty years later, the group had thousands of members and affiliated chapters in 20 countries.

...