RESPECTABILITY, LEGITIMACY, AND IDENTITY: ACCESS TO AID IN THE MID-20TH CENTURY AMERICAN TRANS COMMUNITY

Abstract

In response to limited resources of all kinds and the strict gatekeeping criteria for medical care in the years between 1953 and 2000, transgender Americans became authorities on their own care. They created resources of their own and developed expectations and criteria for accessing these resources. These efforts responded to their circumstances and the systems that trans people were forced to live and work within. Far from being passive players who allowed the cisgender medical establishment to dictate the terms of their identities and the care they could access, transgender people took an active role in managing their own needs. They created communities, organizations, and institutions, and allocated resources allowing many to thrive.

This dissertation explores the communities and resources that transgender people created for themselves in the second half of the twentieth century as well as some of the services offered by those outside the community. Analyzing the records of trans organizations and trans publications as well as health care initiatives and legal aid within trans communities, it asks who was able to access these limited resources and examines how resource allocation shaped the prospects, self-definition, and internal hierarchy of the early transgender community in urban areas. In answering those questions, my study centers the efforts and participation of transgender people in the United States, between 1953 and the early 2000s, before the rise of mass access to the Internet.