Supporting Transsexual Identity During Second-Wave Feminism: Differing Perspectives

This essay was written during my senior year at the University of Denver. It was my final essay for a course titled "American Women's History", taught by Dr. Elizabeth Escobedo. Given the political climate of 2023, I found it imperative to examine the beautiful and complex recent history that has shaped trans* identity as we understand it today. Finding connections between the cisgender second-wave feminist community and the transsexual community can serve as a site of understanding and solidarity in the modern day.

Download this essay as a PDF:

supporting trans identity.pdf

Download PDF • 106KB

Second-wave feminism and the emergence of transgender identity both grew alongside one another during the same era. The people we now understand to fall under the transgender umbrella, referring to themselves as “transsexuals” or “transvestites” at the time, often found themselves in feminist spaces. This was because cisgender feminists and transsexual women had a mutual connection through the gay community, which brought them into closer proximity with one another and often provided a space for mutual, if hesitant, support. However, there was still a distinct incongruence in how transsexual women understood themselves and how cisgender feminist allies tended to view them from the outside in. The sources of these misunderstandings tend to vary from person to person as a consequence of both the feminist and transsexual community’s lack of cohesiveness, but some points of contention (such as the conflation of gender identity with sexual preference, drag with transsexuality, bio essentialism, and extraneous expectations placed on trans women in feminist spaces) were far more obvious and prevalent than others.

Marilyn Haft, director of the ACLU’s Sexual Privacy Project, outlined a 1974 paper on the people’s right to sexual privacy to discuss at a policy-implementation workshop. The main focus of her paper was protesting the way sodomy laws and discrimination barred gay people from sexual activity, employment, cohabitation, and housing opportunities. As an extension of this, Haft briefly mentions transsexuals as a group of people that are impacted as a result of sexually regulatory laws. “Transvestites and transsexuals have unique problems because of their sexual preference as well,” she writes. “Their public appearances dressed in clothing attributed to members of the opposite sex have been cause for criminal prosecutions under cross-dressing laws. They, too, suffer police harassment and discrimination in employment, housing, public accommodations, government benefits and parental rights” (Haft, 32.) It is important to note that Marilyn Haft acknowledges that not only did transsexuals experience the same persecution as the broader gay community, but also had their own set of unique issues because of the way they chose to present themselves. However, she distinctly describes transsexuality as a sexual preference, not a gender identity. This shows that many cisgender feminists viewed transsexuality as something to be performed through “cross-dressing” and through sexual preferences and behaviors, but did not quite envision gender and sex in a non-essential context. Although Marilyn Haft is clearly in favor of liberation for transsexual-identified individuals, she still conceptualizes transsexuality as an extension of homosexuality, not as an identity that is first and foremost based in an introspective feeling of being a different gender than what one has been assigned at birth as we more modernly understand it.

A 1973 article written by a transsexual woman using the pen name Margo, titled “Beyond Two-Genderism: Notes of a Radical Transsexual”, addresses the way that many second-wave feminists defined transsexuality and criticizes it. In it, she has two lists of suggestions, the first titled “To the Feminist Movement” and the second titled “To the Gay Movement.” Number two of “To the Gay Movement” directly contradicts Marilyn Haft’s attribution of sexual preference to the problems of transsexual individuals. It reads, “Explain that gay people are those who wish to love a member of their own sex, while transsexuals wish to change sex. This is the difference between sexual preference and gender identity, and it should be known in order to confront the confusion and needless conflict between transsexuals and gay people.” She also mentions a concept that she calls “two-genderism” and rejects the concept of bio essentialism when it comes to gender identity. She makes the claim that “Recognizing the problems of intermediate people would be a humane step for anti-sexist groups and a move toward a freer view of sex and gender for everyone. It would help bring to an end the two-genderism which is being challenged in genetic research but not yet in social reality” (Margo.) Compared to Marilyn Haft’s definition of transsexuality as a sexual preference that is performed through “cross-dressing in clothing of the opposite sex”, Margo takes a more fluid and anti-binary approach to the very concept of gender and sex, making the claim that “two-genderism” is a concept that can be challenged both socially and genetically.

A 1972 pamphlet for Salmacis, a feminist social society that encouraged interactions between femmes “of either genetic sex”, is incredibly enlightening to how cis and trans women were expected to interact with one another in casual social settings. Its glossary defined transsexual people using this term: “Male-girl: (Term-of-art) A male transsexual, transvestite, or a person who has undergone the male-to-female sex conversion; who believes that her (his) fundamental, underlying personality is female. A bi-sexual or heterosexual drag-queen.”

The pamphlet also listed these requirements for membership; “Membership is specifically open to feminine gay and bi-women; to feminine persons, who have been converted from physical males to physical females (by surgery and/or by endocrine treatments); to male transvestites, male transsexuals; and to their wives and girl friends. Latently heterosexual women and heterosexual women who are seeking feminine boy friends are also invited to join” (Salmacis.) The pamphlet combines drag queens and transsexual women into one term. Like Marilyn Haft’s paper, this pamphlet essentializes “real” gender to the body and also essentializes transsexuality to how it is performed. The pamphlet has a specific dress code for transsexual women, stating that they are not allowed to arrive to events in male attire, are not allowed to bring male escorts, and should not plan to get dressed into more feminine clothing at the event. “THERE WILL BE NO EXCEPTIONS TO THIS RULE!” it reads. “If you, or your guests, appear in male clothes, you will be asked to leave at once, with prejudice” (Salmacis.) Personal identity is not considered here. The way that a person physically appears takes priority, much like in Marilyn Haft’s paper. These rules were staunch regardless of whatever safety risks it may have posed for a transsexual woman to travel to the event wearing feminine clothing or the fact that transsexual women who had not gone through gender-affirming surgery were less likely to get away with wearing feminine clothing in public. Though the pamphlet claims that “All feminine and pro-feminine persons are welcomed to attend these gatherings without bias,” a bias was unintentionally created through the dress code enforced solely on transsexual women and through the society’s failure to accommodate transsexual women who did not feel comfortable wearing feminine clothing on their way to gatherings.

Margo also addresses the problem with all-female groups in her own essay. In her fourth suggestion to the feminist movement, she writes, “In exclusively female groups, redefine what it means to be female so that male transsexuals may have at least partial membership before surgery. It is just at this transitional point, when the transsexual is beginning to live in her new identity, that communication with her sisters may be important in shaping her life-style and in getting a wider perspective on what it means to be a woman” (Margo.)

Although Salmacis attempted to accommodate transsexual women who had not had surgery, the group failed through its excessive dress codes for transsexual women and its insistence that transsexual women be dressed femininely upon arrival to meetings. This rule had the potential to create a disparity between post-operation transsexual women, who could more safely wear feminine clothing in public, and pre-operation transsexual women, who were more likely to face harassment for doing so. The group prided itself in creating alliances, friendships, and romances between cisgender and transsexual women, but still implicitly created a hierarchy.

Salmacis’ grouping of transsexual women and drag queens together is challenged by Paula Nielson’s 1978 article, “The Transsexual Plight.” “Most people, including gay people, need to be educated on the difference between the ‘drag queen’ and the transvestite,” she wrote. “The latter are usually overt heterosexuals (although many may be latent bisexuals) – they feel as men, and they know they are men…The transsexual, on the other hand, is deeply unhappy as a member of the gender to which s/he was assigned by her/his morphology.” Nielson also addressed the lack of understanding that she, much like Margo, felt when she was in feminist or cisgender gay spaces. Upon reflecting on this, she writes, “I’ve heard comments that were cruel, although not intentionally so…I have been able to forgive those who make cruel remarks because I realize the remarks are made out of ignorance rather than out of a desire to be hurtful. Nevertheless, the remarks did hurt” (Nielson.) This lack of understanding that both women described is evident through Salmacis’s policy on transsexual femmes and Marilyn Haft’s description of transsexuality as a form of sexual preference. Salmacis and Marilyn Haft both sought to include transsexual women in their movements—but in doing so, they both displayed their misunderstanding of transsexual women and served as proof of Margo and Nielson’s grievances with cisgender feminist and gay spaces.

Though transsexual women could find a place in the feminist movement along with support and solidarity from cisgender feminists and the cisgender gay community, they still often held differing ideas about what it meant to be transsexual. Furthermore, implicit hierarchies were still created in spaces where transsexual women and feminists comingled. Though gender is more commonly understood to be non-essential and transgender women are no longer so readily grouped in with drag queens, echoes of these issues can still be seen in modern queer and feminist discourse.