Yo, a friend of mine made an amazing list about imortant and historical trans men!
A list of historical (and some recent) trans men since everyone likes to ignore the fact that we did in fact exist before Chaz Bono came out
(TW: transphobia, obviously, and r*pe)
• Hatshepsut (1479 - 1458 BC)
Hatshepsut was a female Egyptian
pharaoh, who went to great lengths to
present as a man, wearing male
clothing and a fake beard, took on
wives, and used both male and female
pronouns.
Though it cannot be definitively said
if Hatshepsut was a trans man or not,
a lot of the evidence points to that
being the case.
• Anonymous Man (16th century)
Henri Estienne wrote of a FTM man
who was burned alive for living as a
man, learning a trade, and taking a
wife. The man was outed by someone
who recognized him from their
hometown and when given the option
between death and living as a woman,
the man chose death.
• Jospeh Lobdell (1829 - 1912)
A frontier man and skilled marksman
who lived on the frontier with his wife
before being locked in an asylum for
insisting that he was a man.
Scholars used to label him as a lesbian
before it was revealed by his own
writings that he more likely was in fact
a trans man.
• Reed Erickson (1912 - 1992)
After inheriting his father’s fortune in
1962 and after transitioning in 1963,
Erickson launched the Erickson
Educational Foundation in 1964 and
through that laid the foundation for
several trans activism organizations
like the Harry Benjamin International
Gender Dysphoria Association,
Paul Walker’s Janus Information
Service, Sister Mary Elizabeth’s and
Jude Patton’s J2CP, and several
others.
He was also an alternate health
practices supporter and funded
research on homeopathy and
acupuncture.
• Billy Tipton (1914 - 1989)
An American jazz musician from 1936
to 1970, Tipton began presenting as
male full time in 1940, with only his
two cousins knowing his assigned
gender.
To avoid explaining his breasts and his
lack of package, he would tell women
that he had been in a serious car
accident that resulted in damaged
genitals and broken ribs that he had to
keep wrapped constantly.
No one knew he was trans until he
died and and it was revealed by the
autopsy.
• Dr. Alan L. Hart (1890 - 1962)
An American physician, radiologist,
TB researcher, writer and novelist.
Alan L. Hart was one of the first trans
men to have a hysterectomy and a
gonadectomy in the US and his
research on TB detection saved
thousands of lives.
He presented as a boy as a child and
was encouraged by his grandparents
and parents to do so, and was listed as
his grandparent’s grandson in their
obituaries. He’s was recorded as
always begging to cut his hair, wear
boy clothes, and would refer to himself
as a boy as a child.
He’s the first documented trans man
in the united states. His doctor who
helped with his transition described
him as “extremely intelligent and not
mentally ill, but afflicted with
a mysterious disorder for which I have
no explanation” and said that “from a
sociological and psychological
standpoint [Hart] is a man”.
Not only was he a man of medicine but
he was also a fiction writer, and such
a lot of his fiction writing reflected his
own experiences and feelings.
• Michael Dillon (1915 - 1962)
The first FTM person to have a
phalloplasty. He’s also believed to be
the first FTM person to undergo hrt.
While in the hospital with a head injury
he met a plastic surgeon who gave
him a double mastectomy and a note
to help get his birth certificate
changed.
Dillon performed SRS on Roberta
Cowell, the first British trans woman to
receive SRS, but because Dillon had
not completed his medical training the
surgery was considered illegal.
Later on he ended up devoting the
rest of his life to Buddhism in India.
• “Little Axe” Broadnax (1916 - 1992)
Little Axe was an American gospel
singer. I couldn’t find much on his
personal life, but he was apart of
several gospel groups between the
1940’s and 1980’s.
He was not discovered to be trans
until his death in 1992.
• Lou Sullivan (1951 - 1991)
An American author and activist, and
also one of the first trans men to
publicly identify as gay. He’s heavily
credited to the modern understanding
of gender identity and sexuality being
different things.
As a child, he would write in his journal
about being confused about his
identity, and expressed his ideas of
wishing he were a man and wanting to
be a gay man there from a young age.
He moved away from Milwaukee in
1975 to San Francisco so he could
have easier access to not only hrt but
a more understanding community. His
family was supportive of this move and
gave him a man’s suit and his
grandfather’s pocket watch as going
away presents.
In San Francisco, he lived openly as
a gay trans man but was denied SRS
constantly because of his sexuality,
since at the time trans people were
expected to adhere to a more
heterosexual lifestyle. He finally had
SRS in 1986.
He was diagnosed as HIV positive in
the same year, and said afterwards:
“I took a certain pleasure in informing
the gender clinic that even though
their program told me I could not live
as a Gay man, it looks like I’m going to
die like one.”
As an adult he was active in the
Gateway Gender Alliance, which was
one of the first educational
organizations that offered support for
FTM people. He was an editor for The
Gateway, a newsletter with “news
and information on transvestism and
transsexualism” that originally primarily
focused on MTF issues, but started to
also talk about FTM issues under his
editing.
He was a founding member of the
GLBT Historical Society in San
Francisco, he founded FTM
International - an organization
specifically for trans men - and was a
huge advocate for gay trans men, and
gay trans people in general.
He ended up passing due to HIV
related complications.
• Brandon Teena (1972 - 1993)
TW: r*pe, assault/violence, murder
Brandon Teena was raped and
murdered at age 21 for being trans.
He asserted that he was male from a
young age and began identifying as
a man during adolescence. He would
constantly reject school dress code by
dressing masculinely.
When he was 18 he tried to join the US
army but failed to enter after listing his
sex as male.
In 1993 he began living as a man full
time and associating with John L.
Lotter, Tom Nissen, and Lana Tisdel.
During a Christmas Eve party, Nissen
and Lotter forced Brandon to pull
down his pants revealing that he was
trans. They forced him into a car, drove
to a nearby meat packing plant, and
raped him. They then took him to
Nissen’s house, where they told
Brandon to shower, allowing him to
escape out the bathroom window and
to Tinsel’s house.
They went to the ER where while
Brandon was having a rape kit done,
he was asked invasive, rude, and
unnecessary questions about him
being trans so they left.
When Nissen and Lotter found out
about the police report and rape kit
they started a hunt for Brandon, and
eventually found him on December
31st when they shot and killed him and
the two other people in the house
where he was staying. Brandon was
also stabbed in the chest to ensure he
was dead.
He’s had two movies made on his life
a documentary called The Brandon
Teena Story and movie called Boys
Don’t Cry.
Some more recent trans men include:
• Thomas Beatie - in 2007 was the first
trans man to become pregnant
through artificial insemination after
finding out his wife was infertile.
• Balian Buschbaum - a former German
pole-vaulting champion. He competed
during the early 2000s and retired in
2007 to transition
• Chaz Bono - son of Sonny and Cher,
he is a writer, musician, and activist
• Ian Harvie - a comedian and actor, he
was in Transparent and Roadtrip
Nation
• Buck Angel - a former adult film star
and producer, and is now a trans
activist, writer, and speaker
There are obviously many, many other well known current trans guys out there, but those are just some ✌️
The history of trans guys is often overlooked and/or forgotten, so hopefully you learned something from this
