1969 June Justice Stonewall Uprising/Riots/Rebellion - Much has been written about this event as being pivotal as a rallying point in the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement. A number of transgender and gender non-conforming patrons of the bar were participants in the riot including Silvia Rivera, Marsha P. Johnson, and Miss Major Griffin-Gracy. Stormre Delaverie, a butch lesbian woman, is reputed to have thrown the first punch while being arrested and calling on the other patrons to do something.
That's what Stormie DeLaverie called it. Stormie was a she/her butch and a drag king, and she most reliably credited as throwing the first punch at Stonewall. Stonewall was owned by the mob and patronized by a broad cross-section of the LGBTQ+ community. Folks like Stormie, who were gender non-conforming, could be arrested for violating anti-masquerade/ anti-crossdressing laws on police whim. The lore was that if you were wearing at least three articles of clothing of your birth assigned gender you'd be let off.
Most bars, even queer bars, didn't want to give the police more pretext for a raid, & held to gender normative dress-codes.
Stonewall did too but was a little looser & was patronized by a range of trans, drag, & gender non-conforming folks in addition to cis gays & lesbians.
That and concern over mob ownership of the bars were the pretexts for the raid on Stonewall when the rebellion started, and among the trans women and drag queens being pulled into the paddy wagon near the beginning was Stormie's friend, Jayne County, a trans woman.
Stormie has recounted then saying "That's my friend [Jayne]!" and slugging a cop, knocking him to the ground. While she was being hauled away herself, she called to the crowd "Why don't you do something?" and the rebellion really took off.
Some would have it that cis gay men were the only ones there. They were there but they were hardly alone. There were about two hundred people in the bar when it was raided, along with two undercover cops posing as lesbians in the bar before the raid.
Some have Marsha P. Johnson as throwing the first brick. It's clear Marsha had a leading role, but she had said that when she arrived it was already going on.
Marsha had also said she had been there for a party. Her thrown brick was likely the widely witnessed act of her climbing a street lamp with a purse laden with a heavy object and dropping it on a cop car, busting its windshield.
Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, a trans woman, was arrested there and had her jaw broken & was knocked unconscious before much had happened.
Tammy Novak, also a trans woman, was the ex-girlfriend of one of the mobsters who ran Stonewall and got a free pass on the three-article entrance screening because of that. She had managed to escape being arrested on the first night and brought Sylvia Rivera with her for the second night.
Warhol superstar, Holly Woodlawn, was there at least in passing, and witnessed Sylvia break a bottle over a cop's head.
Judy Bowen, another trans woman with a mafia associated boyfriend, was there and reports events continuing through 4 am.
Other trans women who were there include: Allison Allante, who was underage at the time, Christina Hayworth, Yvonne (Maria?) Ritter, a black eighteen year-old high school senior who came wearing her mother’s dress, Kiki, who came with Ritter for Ritter’s birthday, Michelle, and Miss Peaches who was also a drag queen.
Other drag queens whose gender-identity I'm uncertain about & who were there include Martin Boyce, Ruth Brown, and Birdy Rivera
And additional gender non conforming folks and crossdressers who were there include Jackie Hormona and Zazu Nova.
1969 July: Medical In London at the First International Symposium on Gender Identity, “psychiatrist John Randell stated that he never offered surgery or used the word “transsexual” with patients, and told applicants who requested surgery it was “up to them to prove” they could pass as the gender they desired and be successful (EEF, 1969a, pt. 2). “Success” was not defined by clinicians in the literature, but connoted passing as a binary gender, being heterosexual, and attaining a middle- to upper-class financial status. If applicants lost their jobs or their families rejected them, this was “their problem” (EEF, 1969a, pt. 2)”
1969 July Justice The Gay Liberation Front (GLF) was founded in the aftermath of Stonewall. It allied with and partially modeled itself on the Black Panthers.
1969 July Medical The 1st International Symposium on Gender Identity: Aims, Functions and Clinical Problems of a Gender Identity Unit, took place at the Piccadilly Hotel in London, July 25-27, 1969 and was co-sponsored by the EEF and the Albany Trust of London. It was chaired by Professor C.J. Dewhurst of Queen Charlotte's Hospital, London. A later such symposium became the springboard from which the Harry Benjamin Society (which became WPATH) was formed.
1969 October: Justice In NYC, in the aftermath of Stonewall, Bunny Eisenhower (performer), Lee Brewster (later owner of Lee’s Mardis Gras Boutique) and others formed Queens, soon to be re-named Queens Liberation Front (QLF). While formally established in October, Brewster had announced plans for the organization prior to Stonewall at a drag ball she hosted in February 1969.
1969 December Justice The Gay Activist Alliance (GAA) splintered off of the GLF.
1970:Justice The Christopher Street Liberation Day March/Parade, which became the first Pride March, was a protest march on the first anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. It was sponsored and organized in part by QLF.
1970 Justice Rock musician, Angela Lynn Douglas left the Los Angeles branch of the GLF and founded Transsexual Action Organization. She relocated to Miami in 1972, had gender confirmation surgery in 1977 but it was botched and she sued her surgeon. She disbanded TAO and revealed herself to be a neo-Nazi and a racist. She detransitioned and retransitioned multiple times and died in 2007.
1970-1973: Justice STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries) & STAR House were founded in NYC and run by Silvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson along with Bubbles Rose Lee, splintering off of GLF and GAA. They advocated for rights of trans and gender non-conforming people and providing shelter to those who would otherwise be homeless.
1970 October: Justice The London branch of the GLF was formed.
1971 Culture Carol Beecroft of Beverly Hills, left Virginia Prince’s FPE and founded the Mamselle Sorority, the first open organization for crossdressers (later the first one with a board of directors). FPE, Heels and Hose, and The Beaumont Society had all operated in secret.
1971 Justice Members of the Queens Liberation Front, Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, and others protested in Albany against the anti-crossdressing laws still on the books in New York State.
1971 Medical Physicians and psychiatrists continued to develop screening criteria for medical interventions for trans individuals based on a rehabilitation model. Rather than aiming to help trans people more satisfyingly embody their identities, they looked to intervene when results would lead to economic and social “improvements” in their lives such as fewer interactions with the legal system, steadier employment, and marriage.
1971 Culture Science fiction and fantasy author and editor Donald/Donna/Doris A. Wollheim (1914-1990) co-founded DAW books with his wife Elsie. Wollheim was a crossdresser who had attended the Chevalier D’Eon resort in the Catskills in the 1960s and was a member of one of the Manhattan chapters of FPE.
1972 Culture Crystal LaBeja founded what is considered the first drag house. Drag balls themselves go back to the Oddfellows balls of the mid 1800s at least and continued to evolve.
1972 Justice The first London Pride was held, organized in part by future authors and trans women Rachel Pollack and Roz Kaveney. Pollack and Kaveney also co-authored the GLF pamphlet “Don’t Call Me Mister, You Beast”.
1973 April Justice Having been kicked out of the Daughters of Bilitis the prior December, folk singer and trans woman Beth Elliot performed at the West Coast Lesbian Feminist Conference in Los Angeles and was protested by The Gutter Dykes for being a "man". The day after her performance, keynote speaker Robin Morgan characterized Elliot as a transvestite with the mentality of a rapist and compared trans people to drag and drag to blackface.
1973 June Justice At Pride, a drag performance had been scheduled. Lesbian Feminist Liberation spoke out against the drag performance as exploitative of women. Silvia Rivera, tired of being excluded, took the mic with her "Y'all better quiet down!" speech and calls the white middle class gays leading Pride to task for not helping the gay community that has been jailed.
1973 Culture Susan Collins formed the United Transvestite and Transsexual Society (UTTS) in New Jersey as another FPE splinter group and began publishing “Shemale” as their newsletter, later called “Boys Will Be Girls”.
1973 Culture The Boston chapter of FPE became the Cherrystones.
1973 Culture Canary Conn published her memoir
1973 Medical By the 1973 it was becoming standard practice through Johns Hopkins, to recommend to trans teens a two year real life test prior to any bottom surgery, but allow for top surgery and testosterone treatment for trans boys to make such a test easier. Bottom surgery, while aggressively performed on intersex children, was still generally not endorsed for trans folks prior to age 18. Still, some practitioners would perform bottom surgeries on trans girls as young as 16. A number of clinics did not require as long of a real life test prior to some level of medical transition for adults.
For adult transitioners, Johns Hopkins required proof that at least one member of the trans person’s family could corroborate their gender history and was supportive of their transition.
1974 Medical Homosexuality was removed as a diagnosis from the then current revision of the DSM-2, having been depathologized by the APA (American Psychiatric Association) the previous year. TAO pressed to depathologize transsexualism as well.
1974 MedicalFollowing the depathologizing of homosexuality, the “Feminine Boy Project” shifted from studying attempts at conversion therapy of “pre-homosexuals” to conversion therapy of “pre-transsexuals”. And continued through 1986.
1974 Culture Ariadne Kane of Boston’s Cherrystones, formed “The Human Outreach and Achievement Institute '', which both served as the formal organizing structure for Fantasia Fair, and later also, a March Gala, as well as sharing information with the public about transgender topics.
1974 Culture Elizabeth Carmichael, head of 20th Century Motor Company, a small auto manufacturer which had been prototyping its one model, the fuel efficient, three-wheeled, Dale, was outed as trans by journalist Dick Carlson (father of Tucker Carlson) and arrested for defrauding investors in the company. Carmichael had an outstanding warrant for counterfeiting money over a decade earlier under her birthname. The subsequent trial was a media circus. Her story is the subject of the HBO mini-series, The Lady and the Dale.
How the Creators of HBO's The Lady and the Dale Told a Sensitive Story About a Complicated Trans Trailblazer
1974 Justice Bella Abzug and Ed Koch introduced the Equality Act bill for employment nondiscrimination protections for gay and lesbian people. Trans people were excluded from the bill and it failed to pass.
1974 Medical With Reed Erickson’s assets diminishing and interests shifting towards spirituality, the Erickson Educational Foundation began the process of shutting down.
1975 Legal In Connecticut, Darnell v. Lloyd ruling states that the State must demonstrate a substantial interest in preventing the change of gender markers on birth certificates. The right to correct the gender on birth certificates varies from state to state and is still restricted in some states.
1975 Legal In Columbus v. Roberts, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that the 1840 law that “"`[n]o person shall appear on any public street or other public place in a state of nudity or in a dress not belonging to his or her sex, or in an indecent or lewd dress'" was unconstitutionally vague and violated the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
1975 Culture Betsy Shaw, Ariadne Kane, Betty Ann Lind, and Linda Franklin of the Boston area transgender support group, The Cherrystones, hold the first Fantasia Fair in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Kane’s “Human Outreach and Achievement Institute” aka Outreach Institute, is connected with running the Fair
1976 Legal SCOTUS refuses to hear an appeal by Paula Grossman, who was fired from her job after announcing her transition.
1976 Legal New Jersey courts, for the first time, allow a trans woman who has had gender confirmation surgery, to marry.
1976: Culture Virginia Prince and Carol Beecroft merge FPE and Mamselle to form The Society for the Second Self, aka “Tri-Ess”, aka ‘Tri-Sigma”, which by the previous year had officially become restricted to being for cis male crossdressers.
1976 Culture Dick Carlson, having previously outed Liz Carmichael as trans, outs tennis player Renee Richards as trans as well.
1976 Culture Phyllis Frye, an engineer in Texas, publicly socially transitioned with the support of her wife, initially considering herself a transgenderist. She faced a lot of employment discrimination and entered law school at the University of Houston believing that as a lawyer she’d have the tools to protect herself from the hostility she faced.
1977 February Medical The Erickson Educational Foundation closed down and transferred its transgender oriented programs to the newly formed Janus Information Facility run by sexologist, Paul Walker. Walker had been associated with the soon to be shuttered Johns Hopkins Gender Clinic and had relocated to Texas. In two years much of Janus would be renamed the Benjamin Association, before folding as an individual institution in the mid 1980s.
1977 August Legal Renee Richards, a trans woman, is allowed by the New York Supreme Court to participate as a woman in the U.S. Open tennis tournament
1978: Justice The Tiffany Club, first as something unnamed, then as Genesis for two months, then The Tiffany Club, later the Tiffany Club of New England, later the Trans Club of New England, later the Trans Community of New England (TCNE) is spun off of the Boston chapter of FPE (called Cherrystone since 1973 and later also Kay Mayflower Society), by Merissa Sherill Lynn who found Cherrystone to be too conservative and stagnant and Tri-Ess to be similarly conservative but more exclusive. Lynn’s Genesis club, while still dominated by heterosexual crossdressers, was welcoming of transsexuals as well as crossdressers who weren’t straight, over time it broadened its scope to focus on the entire transgender community. It publishes Tapestry magazine, aka Transgender Tapestry, aka The TV Tapestry, aka Tapestry, aka TV TS Tapestry, beginning in 1979, but first as a simple newsletter in 1978.