#trans hostory

Seeing as it is trans remembrance day and I am the transgender history geek I am, I would like to share a few historical gender variant, trans+, nonconforming folks who suffered from or died from hate crimes or suicide: (⚠️MASSIVE trigger warning for everything you are about to read! Very upsetting accounts ahead that I recommend you do NOT read if sensitive or having a bad day)

An “invert“ noted by trans+, same sex love activist Jennie June (1870 - 1950) as having jumped off a bridge, based on a news article she read. A “male invert” can be anything from a gay man to a straight trans woman.

-Jennie June notes of her old friend Angelo-Phyllis, found having been beaten to death with a hammer in her apartment... (Jennie used he/she for Angelo-Phyllis based on how feminine he/she looked, what he/she preferred, and how he/she carried herself)

-Another of Jennie's friends, Frank-Eunice White, was blackmailed for "his“ (sic, Jennie) “inversion”. I believe it was F-E (could've been Angelo-Phyllis) that also, along with Jennie June, wishing of pregnancy & motherhood, dreaming of it in dialogue w June. F-E struggled with suicidal thoughts at times.

-Z, another intimate friend of Jennie June, was found face down in their boat, rope around the neck and a oilcloth rag over their head... J adds how she feels the police neglected the incident & that due diligence to investigating 'invert & ultra-androgyne' victims was rarity... Official cause of death was declared as suicide.

It was noted how Z's hands were behind their back, seemingly tied with cord, though the father was so distraught he couldn't bear to look any longer so wasn't entirely sure if both were... A cloth is something Jennie June too endured when an assailant shoved one into her mouth so she couldn't yell... Jennie expands by saying how it was possible the two witnesses to see the victim before death wanted to teach the person a lesson for their "androgynism" (found in a blue dress) & that they left them there after having had their fill of mocking, only for the victim not able to untie the thick rope.

Jennie June / Earl Lind as a toddler in the 1870s

Onward to older days

The 40 third gender folks (culturally distinct from trans by definition and nuance) killed by Balboa on the Panama peninsula in 1513 for their femininity... By letting his dogs eat them alive... I have attached the illustration depicting the event.

The massacre at the hands of Vasco Nūnjes de Balboa (I don't have the nj letter and won't look it up for his sake, because I'm petulant like that:>)

Vitoria from Benin living in Portugal (Arrested in 1556 for “crossdressing and enticing men—sentenced to life imprisonment in the King's Galleys”). Vitoria lived as a woman basically full-time.

Joane (Brazil 1591) & Fransisco Manicongo... Latter arrested and charged for “crossdressing” by the Portuguese inquisition and former accused the same.

Something I want to note is how historical transmasc+ accounts of hate crimes, and transmasc+ people in general can be quite hard to find compared to transfems+, and part of that reason is because it wasn’t always viewed as horrible for a woman or “woman” to wear “masculine clothing and acting as a man”, and even lesbians and straight transmascs+ often didn’t receive nearly as bad punishments as gay men and “gay men” ; this is partly due to a blend of misandry and misogyny that paints woman as inferior and puts men and transfem+ people at a standard of having to adhere to specific strict masculine morals in a way I am either too dumb or uninitiated to understand in any more depth, and deviating from them by, say, wearing dresses, would be “reducing themselves” to “lesser”, womanly things... It would often make sense for a 'woman to want to be a man since men were superior and had better pay', and It wasn't often until it had been confirmed that the woman or "woman" had bedded a woman that it would be seen as SERIOUSLY morally decrepit, and 'crossdressing women' often got away with a short prison sentence or other punishment, though this did often vary by time period and country.

Our forefathers and mothers all had their own unique challenges that came with their gender.

This is a part of why male homosexuality was mentioned and condemned in the Bible so aggressively, but female homosexuality has none apart from in the later apocryphal book of I-forgot-the-name apocalypse of something something...

Another reason we have less accounts is because the world often did not care much to write about women and “women”, though there's a lot of nuance to that that I cannot go into without making this even longer 😭

In Florence, as another example, there were closer to tens of thousands of convictions of 'sodomy' during the Renaissance, but when it comes to women and transmascs+ there is far less documented... Though it should be noted the strict way of living and often invisible place they had in society impacted that, aswell... A fairly famous ancient Roman or Greek writer, I forget the name, even laughed at the idea of female-female love existing, and thought it was ridiculous and preposterous, whilst male-male love seemed as natural as anything to him.

Another very big reason is just how oppressive and transphobic, and how that transphobia worked intermixed and shaped by religion in medieval Europe and colonial countries—they absolutely abhorred the sight of a “man lowering himself to womanhood”, and one can find many accounts of this bigotry, such as these two folks when they visited Africa:

Jesuit Joao dos Santos (died 1622) on chibados : "attyred like women, and behave themselves womanly, ashamed to be called men; are also married to men, and esteeme that unnaturale damnation an honor"

Antonio Cardonega (1623 - 1690) on chibados in Angola: "rampant among the people of Angola. They pursue their impudent and filthy practices dressed as women"... Yet cases of missionaries and colonists having the same hostility towards transmasc+ adjacent third gender people is far less common, and there's just this major interplay of factors as to why that was and the reason for... And something I need to study more before I will blurt out something that turns out not true, so before I finish this off is that I'll say that what I've mentioned is not even adequate to explain it all and the variables, and in order to not make this too long I will shut up now :)

-But I will introduce one to you now! And will make it a bit longer to make up for this lack: Anastasius Lagrantinus Rosenstengel, a seemingly transmasc+ person who may be the old recorded case of someone making an artificial penis for this purpose... Anastasius, legal surname Linck, had by 1717 fully adopted male garb and the name Anastasius Rosenstengel.

They were unfortunately sentenced to death in 1721, personally by King Frederick I of Prussia, for having lain with a woman... The trial came with accusations of aggression by their wife, which Anastasius denied but did admit to having had sex with her using the leather strap, stating the devil had controlled them... We have no way of knowing whether their wife was lying or whether truthful or even if they had agreed together that she should lie, as admission of full consent could easily be a death sentence for both... Though the jury was not sure whether execution was prudent as punishment, as the Bible was silent on these things when it came to 'two women'.

Anastasius' execution was the last known of it's kind, as no other cases of a woman or transmasc+ person being sentenced to death for sexual activities with women have apparently been recorded or rediscovered...

This was a time in Europe when the line was very blurry between lesbian women and transmasc+ people, as culturally accepted same sex love and third gender people hadn't been seen in most of Europe for a thousand years and then some.

-And Dr. James Barry, of course, (1795 - 1865) who went through such lengths of not being caught that he didn't even want anyone view his body... He lived as a man most of his life, and was discovered upon his death when, against his wishes, he was to be redressed. He was also claimed to hvae been pregnant once in his life based on a flimsy account of a servant and stretch marks she saw on him, but stretch marks are hardly enough, let alone the unreliable and oft superstitious, biased medical views people had back in this day; furthermore, a professional examination was not carried out, and this conclusion was based on the following: “I am a married woman, & the mother of nine children & I ought to know.” as if women and men who've never birthed a child in their life don't also have stretch marks... We do not know, based on what I could find, how extensive these marks were, if they were typical stretch marks any person can have or if they were more extensive, so this will likely remain unknown.

James Barry was then buried, not in accordance with his request of the clothes he passed in, but was apparently rather redressed in female garb, which is about the most ultimate disrespect and why I have put this here...

"in the event of his death, strict precautions should be adopted to prevent any examination of his person"; Even in death, they couldn't respect him.

On a bit of a happier note, some of his colleagues didn't seem to care very much about the revelation when this became public... But his medical service records were subsequently sealed for 100 years.

(ca 1862) Dr. James Barry with their servant, John. Barry's dog, Psyche, is also featured :-D

-The many arrests of black transfem+ adjacent in Brazil from the 1500s onward for “crossdressing”, oft rooted in their cultural gender variance

-The hostile attitude & polemic in South America towards quimbandas / chibados, people of a cultural gender with African origin, mainly Angola & surrounding

-I would further also like to give heed to the oft blurry historical lines between women seeking male presentation for jobs with better pay & more freedom, and in regards to lesbians and transmasc+ people who often did wear more masculine clothing as they felt most comfortable that way... It can be very hard to discern them, and we do not need to argue or have every ‘female soldier’ be transmasc or every one a woman, as that is misrepresentation and can be very disrespectful to their life — There are many male impersonators like Vesta Tilley, who seems to have been a woman by her own admission, words, and actions; and female soldiers like Mary Ludwig Hays, who seemed very much more like an extremely patriotic woman who gladly returned to womanhood after the war ended... Others like Albert Cashier & Edward De Lacy Evans persisted and further had a persistent drive for masculinity beyond the monetary benefits and freedom not available to women and 'women' of the time... James Barry also was quite a male stereotype—aggressive and loud, and quite the exaggerated manly type of his era etc etc... Florence Nightingale was not a fan, who called him a 'brute'... (She might’ve bedded a few women, btw).

Finally, we clearly have the knowledge that ‘female soldier’ and ‘female impersonator’ are broad in terms of who they included in the historical sense, so let us instead celebrate our shared history of the lesbians, women in general seeking a better life, transmascs+, and the interconnectivity of these people in oppressive worlds that did not understand, let alone try to understand them.

-Tibira do Maranhão, transfem+ adjacent person tied to a cannon and....

Someone told them "if you want to have long hair in Heaven & the body of a woman rather than that of a man, ask Tupan to give you the body of a woman & you will be resurrected as [one], & there in Heaven you'll be alongside women, not men"... The original account does not name this person, but later tellings give the aforementioned.

-Mollies, feminine gay men and transfem+ people of Britain, had

There are many contemporary accounts lambasting and speaking about them in very hateful ways, such as one account mocking how they treat eachother as women in a very exaggerated manner paraphrased. I have found upwards of 30 mollies executed for ‘sodomy’ in parish records, aswell as books and websites like those of Rictor Norton —Google Margaret Clap if you’d like to know a bit more about the biggest and most famous raid. The woman & transmasc+ equivalent was Tommies.

Names of a few:

Princess Seraphina or Saraphina in England, worked as a butcher (A Mollie)

Miss Sweet Lips (A Mollie)

Pretty Harriet, England (A Mollie)

Black-eyed Leonora (A Mollie)

Miss Selina, England (A Mollie)

St. Dunstan's Kate or Powell (A Mollie)

Sukey Bevell (A Mollie)

-H. Bode: trans woman murdered in Buchenwald concentration camp

Self-identified “transvestite” murdered in Buchenwald concentration camp after various Paragraph 183 & 175 convictions

Section 176 of paragraph 3

R — trans lesbian In Berlin-Wittenau Medical Center (1938) who passed in 1943... hounded by Nazis and abused by doctors, eventually dying under unclear circumstances, official reports stating suicide or accidental suicide through autoerotic asphyxiation

Liddy Bacroff / Bacroft — imprisoned under article 175 and murdered in Mauthausen concentration camp.

In 1931

-Extra warning for this one:

A transfeminine person in a concentration camp who had their head shoved into a dirty latrine by guards until they drowned, as noted by survivor Kurt von Ruffin.

-DOZENS of cases of transfeminine+ and transmasc+ adjacent people executed—through hate crime and moral policing to imposed colonizer values—in and around Mexico from the 1500s onward (mentioned in abundance : “Trans misogyny in the colonial archive: Re-membering trans feminine life and death in New Spain, 1604–1821” https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-0424.12733)

-Jennie June, herself, nearly died on multiple occasions and makes note that a good chunk of the ultra-androgynes from back then (1870s to early 1900s) had died from either suicide or hate crimes... She was once beaten so badly that she had to be away from work for weeks...

Another time, soldiers the author, whose common pseudonym was Ralph Werther, fancied at a fort she somehow had access to pretended to hang her as a sick joke... They picked her up by force and did the whole thing, only stopping short of actually dropping her onto her neck—

Yes, a mock hanging.

-X, a person noted by Jennie June in the news found hacked and bludgeoned with the blade and pommel of a Sabre the victim had on the wall... This person was described by J as an Androgyne (not sure if transfem+ or feminine gay man, as androgyne itself is broader than ultra-androgyne)

-Murder of Y, noted by Jennie June 29 days after X & close by, seemingly connected.. Both “elderly bachelors” (Y was 59)who collected antique weapons & had opulent displays upon their person w jewelry.. Y was strangled, deep purple marks upon the neck clearly visible.. No forced entry in either case.

-Last one...

A transmasc+ person in medieval Netherlands who married a woman, was found out after being recognized by someone from his home village, and then given two options: to return living as a woman or to die—he chose to die.

These are only the ones I can recall off the top of my head; I'm currently seeking more stories & names of transmasc+ people who were forced to dress, act as women—pls feel free to share!❤️ I will credit you in my codex when its first version releases! Unless you do not want the attention, which I respect! 🌺

Await the codex of sexualities, genders and sexes! Yippie!

Please forgive the lack of sourcing—I am terrible at keeping track of them all, but I swear on my own honour that all of these have a source, be it a book, article in a journal, news article, direct contemporary accounts or other... In other words, you will be able to find more info about all of these across the internet :-) I can say that all the Jennie June ones are from her first two books, 1918 Autobiography Of An Androgyne, & 1922 The Female-Impersonators.

Pls take care as well as can do; With warm stranger-ly affections and basic humanity,