When did trans activism really become a big thing?

[sunhasgothishat]

And yes I have googled it before asking, but what comes up isn't that clear.

There's a lot of "trans people have been around for centuries" etc, but when did it really take hold, and pronouns became a big thing?

I know someone who had a sex change operation in the 90's, but has lived a pretty quiet life since then and isn't involved in activism. Then there were a couple of men locally who were known transvestites and would sometimes go out in women's clothes, but also lived day to day life as men.

So what I'm interested to know is when did the transsexuals/tranvestites/gender non conformists/drag queens all come together under the same umbrella? Is there a clear timeline?

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4281733-The-Trans-Umbrella-Is-Older-Than-You-Think I think this could be relevant

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4938575-how-did-it-all-start

This one might help too

When someone said “no”

When the LGB rainbow flag started to mutate into the seizure inducing Rorschach test that it is today and Pride marches became a kink parade with kids as the audience.

As detailed in the opening chapters of The Women Who Wouldn't Wheesht, in Scotland at least, the real push to imbed gender ideology into Scottish civic life and institutions started from around 1997.

The GRA was passed in 2004, after many years of lobbying, most of it quiet.

Things ramped up since then, especially when Ruth Hunt took over at Stonewall and added 'T' to their remit, 2014.

Ha - I've bought the book but I was saving it to read on holiday! Guess it'll tell me all I need to know.

Thanks all for the links to the other threads

Somewhere there's a post about a newsletter in the 1970s that brings them all together. Something about not allowing women to gatekeep what it is to be a woman. Does anyone know the post I mean?

ETA: in the trans umbrella thread.

Certainly, whatever course we take as transvestites, transsexuals and drag queens, we must first destroy the trap wherein regular women set up standards by which they accept or reject us
**
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womensrights/4281733-The-Trans-Umbrella-Is-Older-Than-You-Think?reply=108674196&

'When' is an interesting question, but 'how' is even more interesting.

In Ireland, a group called TENI (Transgender Equality Network of Ireland) was set up in 2006 and swiftly became the only voice listened to by legislators, healthcare providers, etc. on the subject of gender, and became the recipient of large amounts of both state and 'charitable' funding.

'What does TENI think?' was what passed for scrutiny in dealing with sex/gender issues in Irish society from that time onwards. For example, the parliamentary 'debates' leading up to the Gender Recognition Act were more cheerleading than debates, with politicians of all parties specifically naming TENI as their only source of information about this thing called 'transgender'.

It is still the go-to group for gender-related quotes in the media, so when the Cass report was published, 'What does TENI think?' informed the press coverage.

Ireland provides an example of how much influence, funding and media dominance a small, focused trans rights group can quickly achieve, especially in a period of general social liberalisation.

The non-binary, 72 billion sexualities, popularisation of trans identities as being 'normal' only happened circa 2012 and onwards.

I used to got to clubs in the 90s where you would see drag queens but there was no association at all with any unbrella other than they were all gay men. I worked with someone who claimed to have 'become a woman' in the mid 90s, but again, no hint of an umbrella or a movement or even any association with gay pride. People considered him as a gay man, as he lived with a man, nobody had ever heard of AGP. Similarly I last went to a pride event at about the same time and it was purely about lesbians and gay men. You'd see a few gay men in dog collars but there wasnt anything overtly sexual in public and no furries.

In my mind this all developed in conjunction with the internet and household access to it from the early 2000s. S
Unrestricted and easy access to weird porn and the rise of chat boards and groups where it was discussed and people were whipped up about it.

Working my way through Gender: A Wider Lens podcast and many interviewees mention 2014 as a big turning point in public sentiment on the issue.

Not sure when it became a big thing but I remember when I worked on a big campus style tech company around 1990 there was at least one male using the ladies toilet and he always left the loo seat up. No idea who as I never bumped into anyone in those loos - massive site almost no women on site so large ladies toilet with many stalls was always deserted, I remember it used to piss me off. Seat left up meant couldn’t avoid knowing a male had been in. I also remember being a bit confused as then I thought they wanted to blend in whereas leaving the seat up was a sign they weren’t female.

The change to "woman being a feeling, not the female sex" self-id stuff - I became aware of it around 2016 so it must've started a few years before that.
This is a funny summary
https://janeclarejones.com/2018/11/13/the-annals-of-the-terf-wars/

In the UK it became a "big thing" ie in the public domain when Stonewall took the decision to no longer be what it was set up to be, ie promoting the rights as same sex attracted people.

Some cynics suggest this was just about expanding the source of funding and donations rather than anything altruistic!

But none of this would have happened if queer politics hadn't been allowed to inbed itself in universities back in the 80s when it poltical platform dovetailed with the male backlash (MRAs) against Women's Liberation.

ie the patriarchy from 2 different strands of politics combined in arguing the Women's Liberation had gone to far and was unfair on men.

In universities this meant that Women's Studes became Gender studies.

Which helped create 3rd Wave Feminism which seem to exist only to tell older women they were irrelevant, and Women's Liberation was reactionary.

Also of course what seems to have been an accidental (really?) growth in gay trans (ie queer influenced) networks starting working to ingrain themselves in institutions where they could influence policies on gender etc.. (See also the thread about the UN attempt to erase the word sex with gender.)

There is much more to this history, but I think that the media willing acceptance of the new Stonewall was because of this, and having it promoted in the popular media has done as much damage as the policies changes by institutions.

And it was only when the Tories proposed changing the GRA to make it easier to get a certificate that women who separately had been concerned started to publicly fight back. But in the intervening period lesbians had felt pushed out of social spaces that had previously been their home, and women working in women's services found younger newer employees and volunteers were arriving already "fully formed " trans allies because that is what they had grown up with.

I'm an academic in the field of feminism/women's studies/women's history, and I noticed stuff really getting heated around 2015 or so. I'd always been ho-hum about transsexuals - I worked with one or two, and while they were not "masculine" in any kind of gendered stereotype or role, I have never thought they were women. I published something which mentioned the clash of rights vis a vis Judith Butler in 2016. It really ramped up in 2017, when lobbying for self-id increased in response to the Tory free-for-all. And when Twitter became a more mainstream medium.

But I can remember in about 1978, as a teenage feminist at university, chatting with friends - one of whom was a drag queen in his spare time. He was commenting on how naff and ugly women who didn't shave body hair were (he was immaculately depilated I gather). I remember thinking then, how dare a man who play acts at a parody of being female comment on what actual women do with their bodies ...

So blokes who play act as women & think they do it better have been around for ever.

In the U.K. it took a big step when equal
marriage was won & Stonewall added Trans. About 2014?

But the push didn’t start then - it just won a victory that brought it to more people’s attention.

Back in 2000 I started a relationship with someone who was teetering on the edge of declaring a trans identity, which he’d begun ideating about in the late 90s, trying to get onto lesbian discussion boards online.

i looked around & found the precursor to the transwidows support groups.

That's my memory of it, too. Started to mushroom post-early social media, 2010 +- 2. Takeover around 2015 or 2016 or so. There were women right the way along saying aspects of it could be a problem, but it was just background noise, meaningless.

The minute trans-identified XYs held forth it seemed like every organization in the world sat up and took notice.

If anyone wants proof that those men are seen as men and are not women, there it is.

In addition to what others have said it became a big thing largely via the hey day of social media. Most of the initial growth was on Tumblr but early on it was still mostly niche to Tumblr which had a particular demographic and for a time worked as containment of sorts.

Then in 2018 Tumblr banned all adult content which caused a mass exodus of trans activists to other platforms, mostly Twitter. From there it spread to other demographics and Twitter became dominated by genderist politics, even amongst people who would never have given Tumblr the time of day. Pronouns in bio and all the other nonsense that people now associate with the pre Musk Twitter became big business and the latest way to virtue signal.

Alongside this social media cultural revolution years of lobbying was also paying off. Stonewall under Hunt added the T and forgot about the LGB and Mermaids had their moment in the sun. Something that at any other time in history would have been recognised for the horrendous, dangerous insanity it was but this was perfect storm conditions and we all know the results of that.

And we have Nicola sturgeon and her cabal in Scotland to thank for up here.

I first worked with a TW where they have previously presented as a somewhat macho bloke and the only changes were clothes, wig, make-up, what toilet they used and going from being able to handle the technical work to pretending that ‘now they were a woman they needed a man to fix their computer’ around about 2001/2002.

There’s a fantastic presentation about where a lot of Transactivist tropes, including the idea of multiple genders (each with its own flag!) came from.

Maybe not a surprise but a lot of the tropes came from the Men’s Rights movement.

I knew of 2 transsexuals through different work places in the early 2000s and I remember that everyone else thought they were a bit odd and gave them a wide berth, probably the same people now who’d be waving flags and have pronouns in their email signatures, but those men weren’t afraid to turn up to work in women’s clothes and wigs, which I don’t think they would have done 10 years earlier, so it was starting around then I think.

Before the 2000s I only knew of two transsexuals personally, one who transitioned in the 90s, one around 1980. The younger fellow was clearly a gay man with some serious personal problem, the elder one also a gay man, but by the time I knew him elderly, celibate, and pretty much living as a woman without others being aware of his transition. Neither were in any way political.

The first time I heard the terms "cic" and "trans" together was I think in the early 2000nds, in an interview with Warren Beatty's transman child. So the whole concept of gender ideology as we know it now seemed to have been in place then.

I think it all ramped up after about 2015. I started seeing it in schools, etc. But also, more generally a lot more insertion of LGB issues into places like primary schools, it was actually quite overwhelming in some ways. Like sex in the larger sense suddenly became among the most important elements of identity, even for kids.

It’s so interesting you say this because on an AMA of a female who identifies as a transman she explained in detail how she experienced the narrative suddenly changing rapidly when she was young and on tumblr. That must have been around 2009-2012 I’d have thought based on her being an older teen or young adult. She was very scathing about it all. I’ll find the exact post and link to it because I found it pretty fascinating to see from the eyes of someone who was and still is trans-identified but even that didn’t make her right on enough to escape their wrath. The amount of misogyny in those people is really apparent from how they love to push trans-identifying females under the bus. I never made the connection to them all moving over to Twitter but that makes a lot of sense now you say it.