Portal:Transgender

Multiple countries legally recognize non-binary or third-gender classifications. In some countries, such classifications may only be available to intersex people, born with sex characteristics that "do not fit the typical definitions for male or female bodies". In other countries, they may only (or also) be available to people with gender identities that differ from their sex assigned at birth.

Some non-western societies have long recognized transgender and/or non-binary people as a third gender, though this may not (or may only recently) include formal legal recognition. Among western nations, Australia may have been the first to recognize a third classification...

Leelah Alcorn (November 15, 1997 – December 28, 2014) was an American transgender girl whose suicide attracted international attention. Alcorn had posted a suicide note to her Tumblr blog, writing about societal standards affecting transgender people and expressing the hope that her death would create a dialogue about discrimination, abuse and lack of support for transgender people.

Assigned male at birth, she was raised in Ohio by a family affiliated with the Churches of Christ movement. At age 14, she came out as transgender to her parents, Carla and Doug Alcorn, who refused to accept her female gender identity. When she was 16, they denied her request to undergo transition treatment, instead sending her to Christian-based conversion therapy with the intention of convincing her to reject her gender identity and accept her gender as assigned at birth. After she revealed her attraction toward males to her classmates, her parents removed her from school and revoked her access to social media. In her suicide note, Alcorn cited loneliness and alienation as key reasons for her decision to end her life and blamed her parents for causing these feelings. She killed herself by walking into traffic on the Interstate 71 highway.

Alcorn arranged for her suicide note to be posted online several hours after her death, and it soon attracted international attention across mainstream and social media. LGBT rights activists called attention to the incident as evidence of the problems faced by transgender youth, while vigils were held in her memory in the United States and United Kingdom. Petitions were formed calling for the establishment of "Leelah's Law", a ban on conversion therapy in the U.S., which received a supportive response from U.S. President Barack Obama. Within a year, the city of Cincinnati criminalised conversion therapy. Alcorn's parents were criticized for misgendering Leelah in comments that they made to the media, while LGBT rights activist Dan Savage blamed them for their child's death, and social media users subjected them to online harassment. Alcorn's parents defended their refusal to accept their child's identity and their use of conversion therapy by reference to their Christian values.

• ... that the 1974 conference Transvestism and Transsexualism in Modern Society in Leeds became an early platform for the emergence of terms such as "gender alignment" and "trans.people"?
• ... that the British musician Charlie Deakin Davies cofounded the Trans Creative Collective, a directory of transgender musicians?
• ... that a 1999 legal case guaranteed the right of transgender people in England and Wales to access gender reassignment surgery?
• ... that when Sarah Jane Baker was released after 30 years, she was the United Kingdom's longest serving transgender prisoner?
• ... that the 2021 film West Side Story was banned in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, and Bahrain, likely due to the transgender character Anybodys?
• ... that trans women in Cape Verde are colloquially referred to as tchindas, named after Tchinda Andrade, the first trans woman in the country to come out publicly?

• 3 - Nemo (1999), Swiss non-binary singer
• 9 – Sarah McBride (1990), American transgender rights activist, politician and author
• 11 – Quinn (1995), Canadian transgender non-binary soccer player and Olympic medallist
• 12 – Cara Delevingne (1992), English gender-fluid model, singer, and actress
• 12 – Bex Taylor-Klaus (1994), American non-binary actor
• 13 – Jin Xing (1967), Chinese dancer, choreographer and actress
• 14 – Arca (1989), Venezuelan singer, songwriter, producer
• 17 – Rachel Pollack (1945), American author
• 19 – Renée Richards (1934), American tennis player and ophthalmologist
• 20 – Demi Lovato (1992), American non-binary singer and performer
• 23 – Coccinelle (1931–2006), French actress, entertainer and singer
• 24 – Marsha P. Johnson (1945–1992), American transgender rights activist
• 27 – Kim Petras (1992), German singer songwriter
• 28 – Andreja Pejić (1991), Bosnian-Australian transgender model and actress
• 29 – Candis Cayne (1971), American actress
• 31 – Caroline Cossey (1954), British model
• 31 – Sara Ramirez (1975), Mexican-American non-binary actress and singer

• ... that the 2015 State of the Union Address was the first State of the Union Address in which the President of the United States used the words "gay", "lesbian", and "transgender"?
• ... that Nicole Maines won a Maine Supreme Court ruling that denying transgender students access to the bathroom consistent with their gender was unlawful, and went on to become the superheroine Dreamer in the television series Supergirl?
• ... that in 1776, a person reported being genderless, changed names to the Public Universal Friend, dressed androgynously, asked not to be referred to with gendered pronouns, and has been called a chapter in transgender history "before 'transgender'"?

It is difficult to generate a counterdiscourse if one is programmed to disappear. The highest purpose of the medically defined transsexual is to erase h/erself, to fade into the "normal" population as soon as possible. Part of this process is known as constructing a plausible history--learning to lie effectively about one's past. What is gained is acceptability in society. ... In the transsexual's erased history we can find a story disruptive to the accepted discourses of gender.