Transgender Nation staged its first major action at the 1993 American Psychiatric Association convention to protest the APA’s classification of “transsexuality” as a mental illness. In the short span in which the group was active, it was instrumental in bringing transgender issues to the forefront of queer political consciousness and for inspiring the formation of new groups focused on transgender rights.
Transgender Nation was first organized in 1992 by male-to-female (MTF) transsexual Anne Ogborn. The group’s first action was a major protest at the annual convention of the American Psychiatric Association
Female-to-male (FTM) activist Jamison Green recalled in his memoir that he had talked to psychiatrists at a transgender education booth inside the Moscone Center as the protesters demonstrated outside. According to Green, many of the psychiatrists were more inclined to speak to him because they wanted to understand why the protesters were outside. “The two strategies worked together,” he wrote, noting that the presence of Transgender Nation demonstrators outside the convention enabled transgender educators inside to make headway in conversations with APA members.
The protest was reminiscent of the “gay invasion” demonstration at the APA meeting in San Francisco on May 14, 1970, in which activists demanded that homosexuality be depathologized and dropped from the APA’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Similarly, transgender protesters at the 1993 action called for the removal of “gender identity disorder,”
Transgender Nation modeled its actions after the in-your-face activism of Queer Nation
In 1994, the group worked for inclusion of “transgender” in the title of San Francisco’s annual Freedom Day Parade, and also lobbied at a public hearing on the issue on May 12 for a city ordinance prohibiting transgender discrimination. Both measures were ultimately successful, taking effect the following year, in 1995. By that time, Transgender Nation had already folded, as had Queer Nation before it. Historian Susan Stryker credits Transgender Nation with breaking political ground for successor groups such as Transexual Menace
As a direct action group, Transgender Nation was the first known action-oriented political group to organize for transgender civil rights. Emerging from San Francisco’s radical queer communities of political activists in the early 1990’s, the group drew inspiration from the Bay Area’s long history of protest for gay and lesbian rights, AIDS activism, and the “in-your-face” actions of Queer Nation and ACT UP.
The mainstream media coverage of the Moscone Center protest against the APA’s continued listing of transsexuality as a mental illness was undoubtedly one of the first demonstrations to focus on transgender rights. At the APA demonstration, furthermore, the direct action and civil disobedience of protesters outside the convention paved the way for transgender educators working on the inside to promote awareness and understanding of the problems surrounding the published diagnoses of transsexuality and related conditions as mental illnesses in the DSM.
Transgender Nation’s efforts to make transgender issues visible came at a time when the debate concerning transgender inclusion in gay, lesbian, and bisexual movements was heating up. In this respect, San Francisco activists played a leading role in the drive to include transgender people as part of the new queer political agenda. On the national scene, transgender activists lost the battle to include the word “transgender” in the 1993 March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay, and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation. Two years later, though, San Francisco pride organizers added the term to the literature of the Freedom Day Parade there, and city officials signed into law what was at the time just the fourth city ordinance in the country to protect transgender individuals from discrimination.
Although the APA demonstration itself did not result in a change in the DSM, the cumulative impact of Transgender Nation’s actions from 1992 to 1994 helped establish transgender concerns as a bona fide element of a new queer political agenda, and they even brought transgender issues to the attention of the country.
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Califia, Patrick. Sex Changes: The Politics of Transgenderism. 2d ed. San Francisco, Calif.: Cleis Press, 2003. -
Currah, Paisley, and Shannon Minter. Transgender Equality: A Handbook for Activists and Policymakers. New York: National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute, 2000. -
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: DSM-IV. Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Association, 1994. -
Green, Jamison. Becoming a Visible Man. Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt University Press, 2004. -
Olszewski, Lori. “Transsexuals Protest at Psychiatry Meeting.” San Francisco Chronicle, May 24, 1993, p. A13. -
Stryker, Susan. “Transgender Activism.” GLBTQ: An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture. http://www.glbtq .com/ social-sciences/transgender_activism.html. -
Stryker, Susan, and Jim Van Buskirk. Gay by the Bay. San Francisco, Calif.: Chronicle Books, 1996.
September 24, 1951: George Jorgensen Becomes Christine Jorgensen
August, 1966: Queer Youth Fight Police Harassment at Compton’s Cafeteria in San Francisco
November 21, 1966: First Gender Identity Clinic Opens and Provides Gender Reassignment Surgery
July 31, 1969: Gay Liberation Front Is Formed
December 15, 1973: Homosexuality Is Delisted by the APA
1978: Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association Is Founded
March 20, 1990: Queer Nation Is Founded
June, 1992: Feinberg Publishes Transgender Liberation
1993: Intersex Society of North America Is Founded
June 17, 1995: International Bill of Gender Rights Is First Circulated
1996: Hart Recognized as a Transgender Man
1998: Transgender Scholarship Proliferates
April 30, 2002: Transgender Rights Added to New York City Law
March, 2003-December, 2004: Transsexuals Protest Academic Exploitation
November 20, 2003: Transgender Day of Remembrance and Remembering Our Dead Project
March 5, 2006: Brokeback Mountain, Capote, and Transamerica Receive Oscars