lesbian history

Mabel Hampton, lesbian activist and archivist

Known fondly as Miss Mabel during her later years, Mabel Hampton (1902-1989) was truly “in the life.” A major contributor of her time and personal materials to The Lesbian Herstory Archives, she witnessed and helped document gay and black life during the 20th century, from the Harlem Renaissance to her own 25-year relationship with her partner Lillian Foster.

Hailing from Winston-Salem, NC, Hampton moved to New York in the 1920s to become a dancer and singer, and found a home in the Harlem Renaissance scene alongside queer black icon Langston Hughes and bisexual blues singer Bessie Smith. She was sent to a women’s reformatory for 13 months for prostitution in the early 1920s, but spoke openly about the kindess she received from other women there: 

“[Another prisoner] says, ‘I like you,’ ‘I like you too,’ [I reply]… we went to bed and she took me in her bed and held me in her arms and I went to sleep. She put her arms around me like Ellen used to do, you know, and I went to sleep.“ 

In 1932, she met Foster (right) and the two remained a couple until Foster’s death in 1978. 

Throughout the years, hampton squirreled away hundreds of letters, photos and other items that chronicled African-American and gay life and history, including her own. She became a prolific philanthropist, volunteer and a piece of living history, appearing in the 1980s documentaries, Silent Pioneers and Before Stonewall. In one of the many oral histories she recorded before her death in 1989, Hampton mused:

You can be a nonbinary woman if you’re cafab,

you can be a trans person if you’re cafab,

but you can’t be a trans woman.

Camab trans people can be woman aligned,

but by virtue of their transness cafab trans people are either nonbinary women using terminology that hurts trans women because of obfuscation of power dynamics,

this is why posts about trans masc positivity is eeesh because it’s the same as saying masc positivity which we got over a long time ago

not to say that trans masc positivity is bad, it’s absolutely not, but most posts geared towards trans masc positivity is absolutely dripping with cis masculinity as its “end goal” of how trans men should be treated and how they transition and that’s why it’s yucky and toxic

So it’s saying that not seeing trans men as men is transphobic.

I get the logic behind it

If I said "you should let trans men use the men's restroom just like cis men do and they shouldn't be going in the women's restroom, the women's restroom is for women, cis and trans, nonbinary people can use either restroom and anyone can use the gender neutral restroom" would you say that is transphobic because I exclude trans men from the women's restroom? If that isn't transphobic than neither is saying treat trans men and talk about them just like you treat and talk about all men. Which is what I was saying. I wasn't advocating hating men, or hating trans men among people who don't already hate men. I was simply saying that if you hate men, but you exclude trans men from that hate then you are treating trans men differently than cis men and that's transphobic because it implicitly misgenders trans people.

This isn't about hating men because they are trans it's about hating all men equally regardless of whether they are trans or not. Which like is a perfectly reasonable attitude to have as a lesbian repeatedly harmed by male violence(cis and trans).

this is why posts about trans masc positivity is eeesh because it’s the same as saying masc positivity which we got over a long time ago

not to say that trans masc positivity is bad, it’s absolutely not, but most posts geared towards trans masc positivity is absolutely dripping with cis masculinity as its “end goal” of how trans men should be treated and how they transition and that’s why it’s yucky and toxic