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History of transgender people in the United States


This article addresses the history of transgender people in the United States from prior to western contact until the present. Transgender people have been present in the United States since its earliest history. Before Western contact, some Native American tribes had third gender and two-spirit people whose social roles varied from tribe to tribe. Americans dressing and living differently from their biologically assigned gender role and contributing to various aspects of American history and culture have been documented from the 17th century to the present day. In the 20th and 21st centuries, medical advances and more visible transgender activism have influenced transgender life and popular perception of trangender people in the United States.

Prior to western contact, manyAmerican Native tribes had third-gender roles. These include "berdaches" (a derogatory term for people born male and who assumed a traditionally feminine role) and "passing women" (people born female who took on a traditionally masculine role). The term berdache is not a Native American word; rather it was a European definition covering a range of third-gender people in different tribes. Starting in the 1990s, LGBT and indigenous activists have promoted the use of the term Two-Spirit to describe gender-variant Native Americans. Not all Native American tribes have traditionally recognized transgender people.

One of the first documented inhabitants of the American colonies to challenge binary gender roles was Thomas(ine) Hall, a servant, who in the 1620's, alternately dressed in both men's and women's clothing. Hall is likely to have had an intersex condition, and was ordered by the Virginia court to wear both a man's breeches and a woman's apron and cap at the same time.

Generally, according to Genny Beemyn in a Trangender History of the United States, what few historical accounts of transgender people that exist in early American history are of female to male transgender people, possibly because it was more difficult for male to female people to successfully present as women before the advent of sex-reassignment surgery and hormone treatments. One example she cites is Mary Henly, a female-assigned individual in Massachusetts who was charged with illegally wearing men's clothing in 1692 because it was "seeming to confound the course of nature."


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