1990s Trans History

1990

1990 Legal  Caroline Cossey (known professionally as “Tula”) is ruled legally male, overturning the European Court’s ruling a year earlier that she was legally a woman.

1990 Culture Elder Myra Laramee, during the Third Annual Inter-tribal Native American, First Nations, Gay and Lesbian American Conference, proposed the use of “Two-Spirit” as an umbrella term for Native American, First Nations people with both a masculine and feminine spirit.  It includes people who in other contexts might be considered part of a range of gender and/or sexual minorities.  The term is not without controversy, as many are concerned that it either oversimplifies or worse still, erases various indigenous gender identities and artificially imposes a Western gaze.
1990 Medical  The Henry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association published its 1990 Standards of Care, the fourth version of the SOC.
1990 March Justice  Queer Nation was founded by members of ACT UP as a direct action political group, which engaged in a number of protests
 1990 September Culture Dallas Denny founded the American Educational Gender Information Service (AEGIS), a not-for-profit organization for disseminating information on gender dysphoria, and providing referrals to physicians, gender clinics, attorneys, ministers, and support groups.
1990 September: Culture  Paris is Burning, a documentary on the NYC balls at the eponymous club in the mid to late 80s was released.  Most participants are Black and/or Latinx. This is the scene that the tv show “Pose” was inspired by.  Footage was shot in 1986 and 1989.

1990 December Justice  JoAnn Roberts wrote the Gender Bill of Rights.  (She also claimed to have written it later in March 1991 with a June 1991 revision.)


1991

1991 Medical  Culture Zissexual was coined in German by Volkmar Sigusch, followed shortly by “cissexual” in English, to mean someone whose birth designated sex is the same as their gender.  This follows the earlier terms cisvestitismus and cisvestite coined in 1914 a few years after transvestite was coined, and at a time when transvestite had a meaning encompassing all manners of transsexual, transgender, and cross-dressing people.
1991 Justice  Transgender women become explicitly banned from the Michigan’s Womyn’s Festival (MichFest); Camp Trans protest tradition begins with leaders including Transexual Menace’s Riki Anne Wilchins, and author Leslie Feinberg..

1991 Culture  The first Southern Comfort Conference was held.
1991 Culture  Joanne Conte, elected to Arvada, Colorado’s city council, became the first openly trans person to be elected to public office in the U.S.  She had medically transitioned in the early 1970s.  Her trans status was more broadly publicized by her opponents early in her first term and she lost her re-election bid in 1993.


1992

1992 :Culture Trans people began connecting through America Online’s TV Chat chatroom and Gwendolyn Ann Smith began lobbying for the creation of a dedicated trans area within AOL.

1992 May: Justice  Anne Ogborn organized the San Francisco based political action group Transgender Nation which continued through the mid to late 90s, modeling itself to some degree on Queer Nation and ACT UP.  It organized protests at the APA’s conference against the APA’s 1993 revision of the DSM for the writing of the DSM-IV

1992 June Justice  Leslie Feinberg published the pamphlet “Trangender Liberation: A Movement Whose TIme Has Come” promoting the use of “transgender” as an umbrella term.  She was also using it in that context to help forge political alliances among the people under that umbrella Mallory Moore's Twitter thread on Feinberg's Transgender Liberation 

1992 August: Legal  Phyllis Frye organizes the first annual International Conference on Transgender Law and Employment Policy in Houston Texas.  It is announced and promoted over the early internet through Usenet.

1992 October :Culture After discussions over IRC, and in the e-mail lists CDforum and Transgen, a proposal for a transgender newsgroup on Usenet is made and brought to alt.config where it is newgrouped by M. Otto as alt.transgendered on October 30, 1992

1993

1993: Culture Stone Butch Blues: Leslie Feinberg, a novel set in the 1970s about life as a butch lesbian, who decides to transition as a trans man through hormone therapy, and then detransition.  It is notable not only for exploring a trans masculine experience but also for detailing working class trans life, which has been underrepresented.  (Free pdf of the novel from Feinberg’s legacy website)

1993 Culture Having lobbied AOL for its creation for a year, Gwendolyne Anne Smith and Melanie Anne Philips lead the company to create TCF, the Transgender Community Forum, and The Gazebo.  By 1994 when she began posting on Usenet, Smith was also publishing an online magazine The Transmission, within that section of AOL and on Seattle's “The Corner” BBS.

1993 April Culture  Mirha-Soleil Ross and Xanthra Phillippa MacKay published the first issue of the zine Gendertrash 

1993 April 25 Justice  The third March On Washington for Gay, Lesbian, and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation was held, with “Transgender” explicitly not included in the title “due to politics”.

1993 July Justice  Cheryl Chase wrote a letter to The Sciences in response to that magazine’s March publication of Anne Fausto-Sterling's "The Five Sexes".  In Chase’s letter she both challenged medical doctrine on intersex categories and announced the establishment of The Intersex Society of North America

1993 Legal  Minnesota added gender identity as a protected class against discrimination, the first jurisdiction in the United States to do so.
1993, December 31: Justice  Brandon Teena, a young trans man, was murdered along with his housemate and another platonic friend.  The story captures national attention and has both a documentary made of it and a fictionalized Hollywood film (1999’s Boys Don’t Cry)

1993 Justice  Transexual Menace: founded by Riki Anne Wilchins and Denise Norris TRANSgressive: Riki Wilchins on Gender Rights and the Future of Transgender Activism, Wilchins was joined by Nancy Nangeroni and others to demonstrate in Nebraska after Brandon Teena’s death.


1994

1994: Culture  Transgender Nation: Gordene Olga MacKenzie explored the segment of the trans population referred to by Virginia Prince as “transgenderists” who lived outside the gender of their birth but without bottom surgeries.  Some reviewers found her perspective to be anti-transsexual and comparable to TERF outlooks like those of Janice Raymond.

1994  Justice  The Employment NonDiscrimination Act (ENDA) was introduced in Congress and failed to make headway.  It included protections from discrimination based on sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation but didn’t include protections based on gender identity.  The Human Rights Commission which supported the bill dropped support for trans people before it was finalized.  It failed to go anywhere.
1994: May 12 Culture Gender Outlaw: by Kate Bornstein, explores transgender non-binary identities.

1994 May 24  Medical  Culture  Earliest known appearance of the term “cisgendered” on the internet alt.transgendered May 24 1994 in a post by Dana Leland Defosse.  The term is used with the expectation that the meaning is understood suggesting it had been previously been in use, but Defosse claims credit for coining it.  The similar term “cisvestite” was being used by at least 1914, in opposition to “transvestite” which in the era filled similar umbrella roles as “cisgender” and “transgender”.  “Cissexual” had been coined in 1991, some forty years after “transsexual”.

1994 July Culture  Holly Boswell along with Wendy Parker and Nancy Nangeroni, designed the trangender symbol, which combines the Mars/Venus male/female arrow and cross, with a third, combined symbol against a lavender triangle, reminiscent of the Nazi internment triangles by way of ACT UP, in the background. Prior to the Helms flag it was the most popular transgender symbol.
1994: August  Medical  DSM IV: Gender Identity Disorder diagnosis added; Transvestism is reclassified as Transvestic Fetishism. “There are no recent epidemiological studies to provide data on prevalence of Gender Identity Disorder. Data from smaller countries in Europe with access to total population statistics and referrals suggest that roughly 1 per 30,000 adult males and 1 per 100,000 adult females seek sex-reassignment surgery.”


From the 1998 Benjamin SOC: “In 1994, the DSM-IV committee replaced the diagnosis of Transsexualism with Gender Identity Disorder. Depending on their age, those with a strong and persistent cross-gender identification and a persistent discomfort with his or her sex or a sense of inappropriateness in the gender role of that sex were to be diagnosed as Gender Identity Disorder of Childhood (302.6), Adolescence, or Adulthood (302.85). For persons who did not meet the criteria, Gender Identity Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (GIDNOS)(302.6) was to be used. This category included a variety of individuals--those who desire only castration or penectomy without a concomitant desire to develop breasts; those with a congenital intersex condition; those with transient stress-related cross-dressing; those with considerable ambivalence about giving up their gender roles. Patients with GID and GIDNOS were to be subclassified according to the sex of attraction: attracted to males; attracted to females; attracted to both; attracted to neither. This subclassification on the basis of orientation was intended to assist in determining over time whether individuals of one orientation or another fared better in particular approaches; it was not intended to guide treatment decisions.”


1994 August 19  Justice  It’s Time America!, the first nationally organized transgender PAC and lobbying group is co-counded by Jessica Xavier with seeds in the International Converence on Transgender Law and Employment Policy. Phyllis Frye (Transgender Law Conference) and Karen Kerin (It’s Time America) began lobbying Congressional reps that year.  State based affiliates were formed, but the organization was most active from 1994-1998 and was largely defunct by end of the 90s.

1994 September Culture JoAnn Roberts’ CDS website went live in its first format.  It began hosting the In Your Face Newzine that Riki Wilchins, JoAnn, Nancy Nangeroni, and Lynn Walker published from 1995-1998, with it later moving to the GenderTalk website.

1994 December Justice  The Intersex Society of North America’s activist branch Hermaphrodites With Attitude began publishing its newsletter


1995

1995  Justice  GenderPAC, the first(?) transgender focused political action committee, was founded by Riki Anne Wilchins and JoAnn Roberts.  Wilchins also began publishing “In Your Face: Political Activism Against Gender Oppression” as a section in the Bisexual magazine “Anything That Moves” as well as in Transgender Tapestry.

1995 Tony Baretto-Neto, a trans man and police deputy in Florida, formed TOPS: Transgender Officers Protect and Serve.  Tony would also 

1995 May 15 Justice  Trans activists including Hannah Blackwell, Davina Anne Gabriel, and Nancy Nangeroni demonstrated at the Brandon Teena murder trial, in Falls City, Nebraska following an event the previous day featuring Leslie Feinberg, Kate Bornstein, and Minnie Bruce Pratt
1995 May 15. Justice  Deborah Forte, a trans woman, was murdered in Haverhill, MA.  Her murderer attempted the Trans Panic Defense but was later sentenced to life in prison.
1995 June Culture Nancy Nangeroni, then head of the IFGE, takes over a radio show at WMBR at MIT from Deb RIch at the instigation of IFGE founder Merissa Sherill Lynn and transforms it into GenderTalk, a transgender focused, weekly radio show, 2020 HistoryMaker Awards - Nancy Nangeroni
1995 July Justice  Transgender Officers Protect and Serve (TOPS) a national advocacy group with other law enforcement officers was formed in Tampa.  Members included police lieutenant Janet Aiello of Hoboken, NJ, following her outing as a transgender lesbian by the NY Post.

1995 August Justice  Tyra Hunter after an automobile accident, died due to transphobic neglect on the part of the EMTs on site who fail to treat her.
1995 October Justice  National Gender Lobbying Day saw Phyllis Frye, Karen Kerin, Riki Wilchins and over 100 others lobbied each member of the House & Senate, over national legislation like ENDA along with the D.C. mayor over Tyra Hunter’s death.

1995 November Culture Legal Chanelle Pickett, a black trans woman, was murdered in Watertown, MA.  Two years later her murderer, having used the Trans Panic Defense, was found guilty only of assault and battery and sentenced to two years in prison.


1996

1996 Justice  “Q” for “queer” and “I” for “intersex” begin, separately to be added to the initialism “LGBTQ” or “LGBTI”, but are still often left out.  Sometimes it is still written just as G&L, sometimes as GLBT.

1996 March Culture Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman, by Leslie Feinberg, profiles several transgender figures stretching over centuries of history.

1996 September  Legal Congress passed and Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), Federally affirming that legal marriage is between one man and one woman, which would later be undone by the Obergefell decision.


1997

1997 February :Legal  Cambridge, MA becomes one of the few local municipalities adding gender identity as a protected class against discrimination. Pittsburgh followed suit in March.  In Massachusetts, Boston would do the same in 2002 followed by Northampton in 2005.

1997 May Legal The murderer of Chanelle Pickett, having used the “trans panic defense” was acquitted of murder and found guilty of assault and battery and sentenced to two years in prison.  Another Boston area Black trans woman, Rita Hester, was quoted in the paper as being worried by the light sentence “It’ll just give people a message that it’s OK to do this.  This is a message we cannot afford to send.”

1997 October Culture Gendertalk, due to its MIT association, becomes regularly livestreamed and archived online, making it the first internationally accessible talk show on trans topics.

1997: Culture Sex Changes: The Politics of Transgenderism, by Patrick Califia

1997: Culture Madeline H. Wyndzen began publishing her essays on gender on the web, eventually gathering them on http://www.genderpsychology.org/ in the early ‘00s.


1998

1998: Medical  Gonadotropin-releasing hormone analogs (GnRHa), used to treat precocious puberty since the late 1970s, began to be used in the United States as puberty blockers for transgender youth.  Blockers effectively stop puberty from progressing, and when a person stops taking them, puberty resumes.  Typical treatment would begin their use in very early adolescence (as young as 9) and continue until the child was 16, at which point if they confirmed they were transgender, then hormone therapy might begin.  Blockers had been used  for a few years previously in Denmark beginning in 1988 and by the early 90s, in Germany as well before being used in the U.S.

1998 April  Medical  The Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association’s updated 1998 Standards of Care included: 

1998 May  Justice  Dallas Denny’s AEGIS became Gender Education and Advocacy (GEA) with the initial board including Denny, Jamison Green, It’s Time’s Jessica Xavier, Gwen Smith (of TCF and TDOR), Penni Ashe Matz and Sandra Cole with a web presence at gender.org on the Above and Beyond Mall

1998 October Matthew Shepard, a 21 year old gay man from was tortured, beaten and left to die hanging on a fence in Casper, Wyoming.  He was found, hospitalized and died from his injuries six days later.  

1998 November 28 Justice   Rita Hester, a Black trans woman from the Alston neighborhood of Boston, was murdered, two days before her 35th birthday.  She was seen as outgoing, loved rock music, traveling to Greece, and was well liked and participated in the local social scene including occasionally visiting the local drag bar, Jacques’ Cabaret, Gordene Mackenzie helped organize a candlelight vigil in Alston, Boston, MA, led by Nancy Nangeroni on December 4th, with participation of Rita’s mother and siblings.  As of this writing her killer has not been found.
November 30: Justice  Reporting of Rita’s murder on alt.transgendered Via Transgender Education Network & GenderPAC
December 3: Justice  Jimi Greydog reported the Boston Globe’s policy to misgender and deadname Rita
1999 March 10 Justice  Riki Anne Wilchins on Rita and other trans murders numbering one a month


1999

1999: February Justice  Gwendolyn Ann Smith released the Remembering our Dead website  on gender.org, which became the beginnings of the Transgender Day of Remembrance.  (Archive version of the site).

1999: Justice  Transgender Flag: current most popular design, designed by Monica Helms

1999 Justice  The National Transgender Advocacy Coallition was founded by Dawn Wilson, Anne Casebeer, Sarah Fox, Cathy Platine, Jessica Redman, Monica Roberts, JoAnn Roberts, and Vanessa Edwards-Foster  in the wake of Riki Wilchins shutting down GenderPAC.
1999 July Justice  Private First Class Barry Winchell, was murdered by a fellow soldier because of his relationship with Calpernia Addams, a trans woman and former Navy Hospital Corpman.  Their story was turned into a 2003 Showtime movie, Soldier’s Girl.   Adams later formed a production company with Andrea James.

1999 Justice  Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink and Blue by Leslie Feinberg

1999 Culture Gordene Mackenzie joins GenderTalk as co-host.
1999:November 28 Justice  Transgender Day of Rememberance was started by Gwendolyn Ann Smith, inspired to remember Rita Hester.  Nancy Nangeroni helped organize the attendant first demonstration connected to it.  Some sources also credit then 21 year old Jahaira M. DeAlto with helping start it, but that’s likely a misinterpretation of reports of her starting events in the Berkshires several years later.