trans history, do not read
intro
Warning to start off with: I am not a scholar, just a trans person who has been extremely online with it since about 1998.
I have seen a lot of unintentional or intentional relitigation of the "transsexual/transgender" discourse trap of the 2000s, and wanted to organize a few thoughts here.
terminology
trans - a neologism, fl. 2010-present. Originally also seen as trans* (this usage probably precedes the now-common use of the bare adjective). From the Latin "opposite in location" or something like. Used as an umbrella term or wastebasket taxon to encompass various gender non-conforming and non-cis groups. Originally fairly big-tent, now seems to fairly strictly refer to people with a binary gender polarity opposite their birth assignment.
cis - whatever trans isn't, fl. late 90s-present. If you are not old enough in trans years that "cis nonbinary" or "cis GNC" doesn't still give you mild brain zaps, you are probably who these thoughts are for.
transsexual - originally coined by US sexologists in the 1940s, as far as I can tell, to describe a class of people who had been seeking and achieving transition care for the last generation. Variant transexual, conceptual opposition at one point to transvestite, homosexual, heterosexual. Replaced a more generalized, big-tent paradigm of sexuality-and-gender inverts. As first practiced, transsexualism was a paradigm of diagnosis and treatment, with other gender or sexual identities (as well as several mental health conditions, most noteworthily autism-spectrum disorders or psychosis of whatever etiology) countermanding it. In classical sexology and early trans discourse trans healthcare was specific to and intended for transsexuals and useless or dangerous for other people. Websites predating the trans* watershed in the 2010s still retain relics of this usage, most noteworthily COGIATI and various passing guides.
genderqueer - origins outside of my understanding, probably fl. 1980s-2010s. Used to describe a broad spectrum of gender and sexuality presentations which conflicted with what we'd now identify as "cishet" norms. Genderqueer people could and did pursue trans healthcare but often in what we'd now call something like "binary drag". No exact opposition term I'm aware of ever developed, not least because genderqueer had a political dimension outside of personal identity and sought to antagonize and problematize existing binary gender structures and norms. Where the overarching goal of the "transsexual" or "transgender" person was presumed to be personal, it was more the norm in genderqueer circles to imagine a different world after this one, from visions as narrow as "the current system but weirder with it" to ones as expansive as "a world with infinite gender variety" or "a world without gender as a system at all".
transgender - origins outside of my understanding (likely crossdressers), probably fl. late 1990s-present. Situated in the discourse of a "sex-gender distinction", but primarily intended to dissociate access to what we'd now call trans-specific lifeways (hormones, surgery, etc) from strict adherence to medical protocols, self-identification with the medical regime that transsexuality prescribed as a way of life. nowadays seen as one long form of "trans" but originally used in strict opposition to, and mutual hostility towards, "transsexual" identity.
non-op, pre- and post-op - orientations towards surgery, probably fl. 1980s-2010s. the question of surgery was of enormous, possibly outsized, importance to clinicians in the early history of trans healthcare, with the end goal of clinical intervention in the transsexual being the removal of secondary sex characteristics of the assigned sex & creation of primary sex characteristics of the lived sex. the question of the desire of the patient was essentially secondary and diagnostic in character - one size was supposed to fit all, and if it didn't you weren't in the right room. this carries with it weird and ugly presumptions - that healthy and happy men cannot have breasts, healthy and happy women cannot have facial hair or masculine features, etc. in opposition to this developed a non-op culture, intersecting with but not coterminous with genderqueer and later transgender culture, which often erred too far in the opposite direction because of the expressly political or identitarian rather than pathological nature of that community - describing surgeries as futile or dangerous where they truly were not, or at least casting them as universally rather than personally undesirable, or sometimes as a political betrayal. relics of this conversation continue in many circles, and everyone trying to argue themselves out of wanting surgery at this late date (2022) has non-op brainworms in their head.
the discourse
in the 2000s there was an absolutely vicious cycle of discourse which we now tend to call the "TS/TG" wars, which included struggle over operation milestones, access to hormones and surgery outside of a major medical protocol (HBS, WPATH, etc). people called each other vicious names, denied each other access to various things, etc. websites essentially as part of their culture included what amounted to loyalty oaths, and cults of personality emerged.
this ended, ultimately, with the partial discursive victory of the TG position: that transition access should be an end in and of itself rather than milestones towards living stealth; that it should be essentially available on an informed consent basis to anyone, regardless of psych history; and frankly many more things that without a deep bench on pre-IC protocols would not be transparent to you at all. (Lou Sullivan, who died of HIV in the 90s, recorded an absolutely beautiful interview in a truly weird setting with a UNLV sexologist in which he laid out the case for transition access as a gay trans man, something which prior protocols regarded as perverse and impossible & which the community which would rally around the "transsexual" identity generally was not in favor of at the time - and which for that matter a lot of "transgender" people would wind up looking askance at anyway, for essentially opposite reasons.)
however, latent in the essential cease-fire was one internal question in the transgender position - is "transgenderism" purely personal, inherently political, or some mix of the two? that subject would keep us all day, however - so let's save it for later.
why it's over
Frankly? It's over because of informed consent.
While some people do adhere to the transsexual label preferentially as a matter of historical continuity, or have since the old days (please never give these latter people a chance to speak to me, they are horrible), one of the raisons d'etre for that community was its ability to gatekeep effectively. without adherence to an established protocol, hormones and surgery were difficult or nearly impossible to access - and without that access, community presence was always conditional, a matter of sufferance. To be in effective "trans community" as what we'd now simply call "a trans person", it was necessary to at least be conversant with and quiet about not just transmedicalism, but a kind of transmedicalism we would regard as nearly neanderthal - one where not just colorful or unusual gender presentations were undesirable, but any non-binary or queer behavior whatsoever were grounds for suspicion and exile. Hell, a transmedicalism where being too fat meant you were on thin ice, because surgeons hate that, and why don't you.
The growth of the IC protocol clinic in the 2000s, and its effective nationalization in the US by the early 2010s, essentially made the online trans community (which has always been, to its great detriment, overbearingly American) lose the necessity for medical gatekeeping as a cultural cornerstone overnight. It still happens, but it's no longer as pressingly necessary as a part of daily life as a trans or queer person as it was back then.
closing thoughts
As this is an expansion of a Twitter conversation, I will leave with the same suggestion that I left that one with: when looking in the past for "trans history", look in the parts that are generally ignored. All of this pretty much applies to the community of those who sought medical intervention. It isn't expensive or meaningfully gatekept to wear the wrong sex's clothes, makeup, or affect; consequently the history of (say) transbian or t4t relationships is in substantial part both the history of doubly-closeted stealth-within-stealth transmeds and of cross-dressers, sissies, drag kings and queens, etc. We must be less prejudiced, if we wish to understand "our" history, about who "we" are, and about whether people who are "us" must resemble us in body, in life history, or in self-concept.
