Where did “Trans Enough” come from?

(This is the second post in our series, “Trans Enough.” You can find a brief introduction to the concept of “trans enough” here.)

Although “trans,” “transgender” and etc are recent terms, what they describe is as old as human history. That is, people who moved away from the gender they were assigned at birth . In many cultures, these people were venerated and treated as spiritual leaders, with sacred knowledges and an enhanced capacity to see the world (See Transgender Warriors, Leslie Feinberg). Over time, space, and culture people we would now think of as trans have been seen in many different ways, have been accepted, revered, or reviled, and have been called by many different names. Colonization and the logics of white, Western supremacy eradicated many forms of trans expression and cultural acceptance across the world. The violence and transphobia exported through colonization and genocide echo throughout our current culture in many ways. “Trans enough,” as a concept, is just one of these echoes.

This blog post is dedicated to giving a brief overview of the history of the medicalization of trans people in the Western world, and how making trans identities into diagnoses created that idea that “trans enough” was a thing that people could be. I know that this post is quite long, but even these paragraphs barely scratch the surface of this rich history! I highly recommend that those who are interested consider reading Histories of the Transgender Child, by Julian Gil-Peterson.

Our modern understanding of trans identities in the Western world began in the late 1800s, during the rise of sexology in Europe, and especially Germany. Magnus Hirschfeld, a gay German-Jewish cisgender man, dedicated his life to researching sexuality - specifically, to prove that variations in sexual orientation were a result of scientifically provable genetic variations, and not a moral issue. In 1919, Hirschfeld founded an institute dedicated to this study, and it operated until Nazis tore it apart and burned its contents in 1933. Not-so-fun-fact: the famous images of nazis burning books are almost always images of Hirschfelds’ life’s work being destroyed.

Through his work, Hirschfeld realized that there were some folks who, beyond being “homosexual” or not, were only truly content and happy when they presented as a gender other than what they had been assigned. He labelled these people, “transvestites,” (trans- meaning to cross over, vesti- meaning clothing), although he recognized that there was something far deeper than clothing going on (and indeed, he arranged hormone therapy and surgical intervention for an unknown number of people). In many ways, Hirschfeld was ahead of his time, and the impact of his advocacy for queer and trans people can not be overstated. At the same time, the work of teasing apart differences within and among a group, and labelling those differences, has long been a favorite tactic of eugenics. Indeed, Hirschfeld, like pretty much all credible scientists of his time and geographic location, identified himself as a eugenicist. 

Hirschfeld was celebrated as “The Einstein of Sex,” though he apparently said he wished Einstein was known as the “Hirschfeld of Physics” (LOL). He toured and spoke about his institute and their findings worldwide, meeting with and influencing researchers, doctors, and scientists worldwide. One of the doctors he influenced was Harry Benjamin, a German-American endocrinologist. In America, Benjamin’s name is strongly connected to transgender medicine, and Benjamin described himself as carrying on Hirschfeld’s legacy.

Although Hirschfeld wrote a book about the people he called transvestites, and although he was the first to refer patients for gender confirmation surgeries, Benjamin wrote in English. Until fairly recently, his materials were the earliest materials accessible to English speakers that discussed trans people, their identities, and their healthcare. Hirschfeld’s writings were not translated until much later. Benjamin developed a way of categorizing trans people on a numbered scale. Have you ever heard of or seen the Kinsey scale? Such taxonomies were quite popular in the mid twentieth century, and trans people did not escape them. It was Benjamin’s scale of transsexual identity, first published in his book, “The Transsexual Phenomenon,” that put forth the languaging of the “True Transsexual”. (CW: a lot of the languaging in this document is harmful - misgendering trans patients, using outdated terms, etc. Please care for yourself and consider your tolerance for mid-century trans medical language!)

Anyway, I would argue that the idea of the “true transsexual” came much earlier, and was the basis upon which Hirschfeld, Benjamin, and other doctors made or accepted recommendations for gender affirming medications and procedures. But there’s a difference between an idea that is bandied about by a small group of doctors and researchers, and a term so embedded in the consciousness of a community that you hear it, again and again, across so many trans narratives! I will get into more modern uses of “trans enough” in my next few posts, but for now, let’s track how the idea of a “true transsexual” made that leap. 

It is true that Hirschfeld and Benjamin saw themselves as allies to the trans people that they worked with. They helped many people, and were instrumental in the creation of a process by which some trans people could access gender affirming care. I think it’s fully possible to recognize their contributions and their ability to see past the norms of their day, as well as their personal commitments to justice and social change, while still understanding that these were cisgender men who approached trans people with the attitudes and methodologies of scientists…scientists of a certain era. 

The very act of separating trans people into categories of “transness” is a great example of how modern trans identities have been crafted from cisgender (mis)understandings of gender and sex. In my academic work, I talk about these types of instances as examples of the “cisgendering” of trans lives, drawing from the work of Sumerau and Mathers. But this is a blog, so let’s just call this another clear example of cis nonsense ;). What I mean is that there is no inherent reason to think that trans identities can be separated this way, or that there’s a meaningful distinction between a “true transsexual” and ….every other type of trans person. 

Further, all of Benjamin’s work was focused on the damage cause by not-transitioning - he talked about his patients being sad and miserable, and made the case that they must be allowed to transition because it was the only ethical way to ease their suffering. This was in opposition to the majority opinion of the time—that trans people were sick deviants who needed psychological “help” (aka: conversion therapy, aka: transphobic torture). So compared to that standard, Benjamin was a saint. Indeed, he helped many people, and many of our trans elders maintained strong and friendly connections to him throughout his life. However, his stance being better than the status quo does not preclude the damage his work could and did cause. Most importantly to this topic—by focusing on the pain and suffering, the gender dysphoria, that trans people faced, and by creating a set criteria by which a “true transsexual” could be identified (for treatment), Benjamin created a world in which trans identity could be measured and judged by cisgender people, and wherein access to medical treatment was predicated on misery. 

Now, trans history is absolutely fascinating, and there’s a lot of threads in this story that I could pull on. In fact, no matter how I lay it out here, I can guarantee you that I will be telling a highly edited, all-too-brief version of this story, leaving out important details, and depriving you of a lot of really interesting history. However, this is already a really long and dense blog, and I want to offer enough evidence to make my point without overwhelming you, my gentle reader. 

To put it all very briefly, trans people knew that their doctors were reading Benjamin’s book, and the book itself was available for anyone to purchase. Copies of the book were passed around trans communities, and Benjamin’s criteria became, for many, a guidebook on what to say to your doctor in order to access care. It took doctors quite some time to even begin questioning why so many of their patient’s narratives lined up so well with Benjamin’s book! Further, though, Benjamin’s trans narrative came to dominate the social imagination of what a trans person was and could be. According to this narrative, “true” trans people knew that they were trans from a young age, conformed perfectly to the standards of masculinity (if they were trans men) or femininity (if they were trans women), were heterosexual (but also basically asexual), wanted a “complete transition” (roughly meaning that they wanted top surgery and bottom surgery), and was willing to completely disappear into society as a passing, “stealth” trans person after hormones and surgery. Oh, they were also purely miserable and in danger of attempting dangerous self-surgeries if treatment were to be withheld. 

So when allowed to be the arbiters of trans lives, this is what cis people came up with. This was their definition of “trans enough.” Trans enough for hormone therapy, for surgery, to live in society without causing too much of a stir. Trans enough to be pitied, instead of reviled. Remember, too, that being considered “trans enough” was just the first step. Trans people had to obtain their recommendations for hormones and surgery, and then they had to pay for it out of pocket. Any post-surgical care needed was also self-funded, as well as travel and any other expenses. And because the surgeries were relatively new, with many U.S. surgeons still learning, they sometimes resulted in complicated and/or sub-par results. And despite this, many trans people needed these interventions—even at great cost, even with the risks. So a norm was created where trans people would repeat the expected narrative, and would then be granted access to treatment (or sometimes denied for arbitrary reasons, such as a doctor’s opinion that they wouldn’t “pass” or would cause too much trouble). 

Of course, trans people fought back against this dehumanizing narrative in many ways, even as they were forced to repeat it to gain care. Activists have raised awareness and confronted physicians, psychologists, and medical bodies directly, individual trans people have ascended the echelons of professional authority, becoming doctors and surgeons themselves, and in more recent years, more and more trans people have spoken up to highlight all the many varied ways that one can be trans. And yet still, the idea of “trans enough” echoes throughout our communities. It finds a home in our own internal struggles to come out, to embrace our identities. It finds a home in the ways we gatekeep one another, making judgments about the authenticity and veracity of various folks’ claims to transness, and drawing boundary lines between various identities. And yes, it is still deployed in medical settings to assess one’s access to hormones and/or surgery. It is actively  finding new life in anti-trans activists who claim that they support “real” trans people (read: people who are “trans enough” by their standards), but not those trans people who aren’t “real, actual, authentic” trans people (again, by their standards). 

Ultimately, when we use the words (or even just the ideas of) “trans enough” on ourselves, our trans children, or on other members of our community, we are echoing a concept that has caused a tremendous amount of violence and pain. “Trans enough” is a concept that is rooted in outdated misunderstandings of trans identity, but it makes a cozy home for modern transphobia. 

In my next entry, we will explore how the idea of “trans enough” is used by cis people these days, and the harm that it causes. After that, we will look at how trans people use trans enough, both within our internal dialogues, and in our community. We will then explore “trans enough” as a concept, and how we can move forward from it. Finally, We will look at where the message of “trans enough” comes from, and I will examine the impact its had on my own life and journey. Hopefully, as a community, we can learn to set aside idea of “trans enough” as the eugenicist, violent idea that it is and embrace the staggering and beautiful diversity of our community.