Trans History - Tumblr Posts
A little lost piece from trans history: a 22-year-old trans woman won a 1967 Wyoming beauty contest. She entered the pageant just a year after she transitioned. Unfortunately, the judges disqualified her after she informed a competitor that she was trans.
(Found this in the depths of the Kinsey Institute archives)
Rare photos from trans history: Olympic runner and Zdeněk Koubek styles Cinda Glenn’s hair, 1936. Koubek was one of the first trans men to gain international fame after he transitioned in 1935.
My latest comic for The Nib was written by my friend Mike Thompson- it’s his first published comics work!
The Nib has been a steady source of income and a huge support to me and many other indie cartoonists for years. They publish amazing work, but will be cut loose by their financial backer in July. You can read the official post about it from editor Matt Bors here. They are still running their kickstarter-funded print magazine, but have to put digital publishing on hiatus until they figure out their next steps. If you’ve been thinking about supporting their membership program, now would be a good time. They have levels from $2 to $40 per month. I really don’t want this to be my last Nib piece!
instagram / patreon / portfolio / the nib / etsy
I just discovered that there was a person who was afab and ended up joining the russian army by the name of Alexander Durov in 1806.
Born a woman, Nadezhda Durova (birth name) ran away from home and joined a light cavallery regiment dressed as a man.
After his identity was uncovered, the russian tsar summoned him to the palace at St. Petersburg, where he impressed the tsar so much that he awarded Durov the Cross of St. George and promoted him to lieutenant in a hussar unit.
He always referred to himself as a man and was upset when people called him a woman.
He signed letters with his male last name.
He expressed feelings of disgust towards his sex and how that worried him a lot.
He never married willingly and adopted many dogs and cats.
He only danced with women when attending a ball.
He asked to be buried under his male name Alexander Andreevich Alexandrov but the church did not agree to that.
I never saw him in "historical transmasculine people" compilations and only discovered his story coincidentally.
Unfortunately, historians still adress him with female pronouns, although he did not want that.
Let's remember him together. We won't allow him to be forgotten.
I'll probably add onto this post later or make a better one but you can read a lot on this wikipedia article:
wrt like, erasure of trans men by referring to potential trans male historical figures as women pretending to be men to escape sexism,,, it’s interesting to me, and also pretty telling, that accessing privilege (regardless of whether that’s even as much of a possibility as people seem to think) is the Only reason so many people can think of as to why a ‘woman’ would want to live as a man. There’s the obvious transmasc reasons of gender dysphoria/ euphoria and the freedom to be yourself, plus some women also just enjoy masculinity and/or masculine clothes. If you personally don’t, cool, but that doesn’t mean those experiences are unthinkable.
We celebrate David Bowie, Freddie Mercury and Prince for their gender-nonconforming amazingness as we should, but let us not forget
Annie Lennox
Grace Jones
Sinead O‘Connor
Dolores O‘Riordan
Patti Smith
Tracy Chapman
Please add if you like, i do not own the photos
Saw some TERFs spreading these images of @degenderettes and actually everything here is awesome and needs more love.
Bash TERFs, love trans people.
from FTM/Female-to-Male: An Interview with Mike, Eric, Billy, Sky, and Shadow” from Dagger: On Butch Women, edited by Lily Burana, Roxxie, and Linnea Due, Cleis Press, 1994
Gender Nonconforming Jesus: A look at art history. CW: religion, transphobia, artistic nudity, depictions of open wounds (Long post)
I bring you… my silly little comics. Saw a tik tok this morning about British Museum recognizing emperor Elagabalus as a trans woman 🏳️⚧️, and I just had to draw this.
Transmasculinity Throughout Time: Lou Alcott
Yes, you heard me. There is substantial evidence that the author of Little Women was in fact a transgender man! He actually didn’t go by the name that Little Women was published under, with family and friends he would go by Lou, Louy, or LM. His children called him “papa” and “father” and his father, Bronson Alcott, called him his son. He said in 1882, “I am more than half persuaded that I am a man’s soul, put by some freak of nature into a woman’s body.” As a child, he said in a journal, “I don’t care much for girls things. People think I’m wild and queer.” He would pass as a man at masked parties for fun, and delighted in people’s reactions. For his entire life, he expressed this identification as a man, and the character of Jo in Little Women was in part a self insert character based on this. So why don’t we hear about him as a trans man? Well, it’s just not convenient for most people to believe that a beloved book about girls becoming women was written by a man.
Im stealing their motto “I’m whatever gender suits the gag”
saw someone share this on their ig stories and i am obsessed
Thinking about that one Wendy Carlos video where she's boymoding and has the big fake glued on sideburns and the suit, but with beautifully shaped eyebrows and that t-girl voice, and shes completely and utterly unconvincing trying to pass as a man, but also shes just so excitedly infodumping about moog synthesizers and batting her eyelashes its hard not to fall in love with her.
I FUCKING CALLED IT
THAT BITCH WITH THE PIGTAILS IS A FTM SELF-INSERT
Transmasculinity Throughout Time: Lou Alcott
Yes, you heard me. There is substantial evidence that the author of Little Women was in fact a transgender man! He actually didn’t go by the name that Little Women was published under, with family and friends he would go by Lou, Louy, or LM. His children called him “papa” and “father” and his father, Bronson Alcott, called him his son. He said in 1882, “I am more than half persuaded that I am a man’s soul, put by some freak of nature into a woman’s body.” As a child, he said in a journal, “I don’t care much for girls things. People think I’m wild and queer.” He would pass as a man at masked parties for fun, and delighted in people’s reactions. For his entire life, he expressed this identification as a man, and the character of Jo in Little Women was in part a self insert character based on this. So why don’t we hear about him as a trans man? Well, it’s just not convenient for most people to believe that a beloved book about girls becoming women was written by a man.
The Inter Ocean, Chicago, Illinois, October 4, 1903