Gender Benders, 1782-1920, by Jonathan Ned Katz

Here are primary documents about the lives of persons identified at birth as female, who later lived and sometimes identified as male, now understood as "transgender."

Reprinted from Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (NY: Crowell, 1976). Published originally on OutHistory in 2008.

Note by Jonathan Ned Katz added March 6, 2019 and revised August 8, 2024:

In regard to people in the past, it seems to me now that we best honor them (and our own present desire to understand them) by trying to discover the changing historical terms and concepts by which they understood themselves over their lifetimes. We also need to understand the changing historical terms and concepts by which others understood them over time.

It now also seems important to ask how all those terms and concepts expressed social judgments and were implicated in the power relations of individuals and classes, social systems, structures, and institutions.