Of Lavendar, Wax, and Witchcraft

“The Other World; Or, Glimpses of the Supernatural,” 1875

Dr. Alan Hart helped pioneer the use of chest X-rays to diagnose tuberculosis. Hart was married to a woman and practicing medicine in San Francisco in 1918 when he was outed as a trans man by a former colleague. Dr. Hart was chased out of town on the back of headlines like “Girl Poses as Male Doctor in Hospital" (he was not posing, of course) and spent much of his life moving from town to town to escape various forms of transphobia. Hart was also a novelist, and wrote of one of his characters, "When it came to outrunning gossip he found he couldn't do it," which was Hart's experience as well—he moved seven times in nine years all around the U.S. in search of safety, but it always proved fleeting. He did manage to get a graduate degree in radiology, though, and helped show how chest X-rays could show very early signs of tuberculosis, thus allowing patients the opportunity to rest and get adequate nutrition sooner, which contributed to better outcomes. Chest X-rays continue to be an essential diagnostic tool; mobile chest X-ray machines that can be carried via backpack now serve rural communities, so Hart's popularization of this diagnostic method continues to save lives.

While it's true that Hart was publicly outed once and moved all over the country for a while, by the time he died, he had served as the director of hospitalization and rehabilitation for the Connecticut State Tuberculosis Commission for over a decade. Nor was he exclusively hounded or excluded from society at home in Oregon, either -- there are regular mentions of him (under his chosen, male name, or occasionally simply as an "Albany man") and his second wife in his hometown newspaper, The Albany Democrat, throughout the 20s and 30s, reporting when they were in town for social visits, promoting his novels, and even reporting on his graduating from the University of Pennsylvania with his graduate degree. Nor does it seem most people saw him as a woman pretending to be a man for most of his life, despite the press his 1918 outing received -- a reviewer of one of his novels even once remarked that Dr. Hart, while a good writer, didn't seem to know much about women! (Having read a bit of Hart's fiction, I don't think this is true, but to each their own, I suppose)

I mention this because I think it's important to emphasize that trans people -- even trans people who have experienced dramatic setbacks in their lives, like Dr. Hart's 1918 outing -- have not only always existed, but always persisted through trouble and often managed to live very fulfilling lives that were not exclusively marred by transphobia. Nor did everyone around them feel that they were simply "posing" as their gender. Even in 1918, people in Hart's hometown expressed disgust at the way the press way treating the story, and the local newspaper did an exceptionally sympathetic interview with him that allowed him to express his own feelings on the situation and affirm that transitioning was the best choice he could have made! In fact, he was very clear he was not ashamed of his choices, saying:

Jennie Jones (b. 1932), “Still Life with Skulls and Candles”

Self-sacrificing

Self-loathing

Insufferable

It/its pronouns

Homosexuality

Aromanticism

Gender (the more the better)

A superiority complex

Dead eyed stare

Inability to process own emotions

Maxmilián Pirner (1854–1924) - Homo Homini Lupus, 1901

Robert Stewart Sheriffs (1906–1960), “Death and the Virgins”, 1929

illustration to ‘The Life and Death of Tamburlaine the Great’ by Christopher Marlowe

lithograph on paper