This article addresses the history of transgender people in theUnited Kingdom since its initial formation in 1707. Transgender people have been recognised in the UK by varying titles and cultural gender indicators, such as dress, and people living differently from theirsex have contributed to various aspects of the history and culture of the country. Advances in medicine, social and biological sciences and transgender activism have all influenced transgender life in the UK today.
InRoman Britain, transgender people are known to have been engaged in the worship ofCybele asGalli.[1] Thereafter, Anglo Saxon Society continued its persecution of transgender or gender non-conforming peoples, referring to them asbæddel or bædling.[2] Some authors have also begun to question the possible roles of transgender people like the 10th century Birka ofViking persons.[3] The RomanCatholic Church played a role in persecutingLGBT groups from the 12th century onwards (seeCouncil of London in 1102).[4]
During the early medieval period, whilst gender roles were strictly defined, some people such asJohn/Eleanor Rykener prove that gender non-conformity was present in the British Isles. At the time, the termhermaphrodite or less frequentlyandrogyny was used to refer to transgender,non-binary and queer peoples during the medievalEarly Modern English period. Medieval Welsh and French literature such asthe Mabinogion mentions the story ofGilfaethwy andGwydion, andLe Roman de Silence which also contain Transgender themes, but often perpetuate the idea of gender conformity and only returning to one's sex assignment at birth.
During the Elizabethan and Stuart era, roles for transgender people were limited, but were reflected somewhat in genderfluid roles in theatre. This became suppressed during the rise ofOliver Cromwell, but returned with theGlorious Revolution (see the Arts section).
At the time of the formation of the United Kingdom, a number of male identifying transgender people, such asCharles Hamilton, began to be identified as 'female husbands'.[5] This neologist phrase was penned byHenry Fielding for his 1746 play 'Female Husband'.[6] Increased awareness and language about the condition eventually led to the term 'Transgender' andGender Dysphoria being coined in the 20th century, with continued activism leading to greater visibility and public awareness of issues faced by the Trans community in the present day.[citation needed] In 1909, a deserter from theSeaforth Highlanders was on trial in Bradford for fraud and desertion, however May Wilson (formerly Clement Mitchell) had been "living as a woman" since she left the regiment.[7]
Many outdated labels includetransvestite (1910 byMagnus Hirschfeld), transsexual (1949) andhermaphrodite. New terminology only began to be introduced into the English language with the emergence of more visible transgender activism in the early 20th century, with terminology initially being adopted in from Germany by gay and transgender writers likeEdward Carpenter andThomas Baty from the work ofKarl Ulrich'sUranian theories, and the termtransgender coined in 1965,[8] shortened to 'trans' in 1996. Other terms such asandrogyne were first used in English in 1552.[9]
Perhaps deriving from the patriarchal nature of its society, British theatre has often played with notions of sexuality and gender. Early examples such as the portrayals found in 17th-century plays likeWilliam Shakespeare'sCymbeline (1611) in the character of Imogen, andThomas Randolph'sAmyntas (1630), portraysupernatural andcomic tropes and show how gender and sex was seen and understood as fluctuating ideas.[10] Other literary traditions such as science fiction also enabled British writers to engage and ask questions regarding the role of gender and class (such asThe Blazing World) merged in British culture and contemporary society, as well as female-to-malecrossdressers were frequently portrayed as heroines in English literature. Later throughout the 17th until the 20th centuries further theatrical roles such as theRestoration Rake, laterMacaroni,Grand Dame (found inPantomime) and the "drag artists performing incamp and shipboard theatricals ... during theGreat War" explored and gave acceptable boundaries forqueer people living in acis-heteronormative environment.[11]
A Busy Day
Crossdressing insilent films began whenCharlie Chaplin andStan Laurel took the tradition of female impersonation in the Englishmusic halls when they went to North America in 1910. In the early 20th century, writers (most famouslyVirginia Woolf) began to engage with new ideas of sexuality andgender identity. In 21st-century retellings, reworking and reappraisal in queer theory of old folklore and mythology such asTam Lin andHervor, plays such asAs You Like It and works of science fiction have also been popular as an emerging form of trans literature.[12]
1656 -Thomas Blount'sGlossographia is published, which defined the termtransfeminate as "to turn from woman to man, or from one sex to another".[13][14] Subsequent dictionaries also repeated this definition for over two centuries.[13]
1885 - TheCriminal Law Amendment Act 1885, that applied in all parts of the UK, was passed into law: the Act included provisions that made transgender people more susceptible to prison time.[9]
1889 - Mary Mudge (1814–1889) dies at aworkhouse havingpassed as a woman. Mudge'sbirth sex was discovered upon postmortem examination.[15]
1959 - John Randell (1918–1982) enters into association with urologist Peter Phillip atCharing Cross, publishing in 1960 perhaps the first higher degree thesis in the world on transgenderism ("transvestism")Cross Dressing and the Desire to Change Sex at theUniversity of Wales having operated on around 41–50 individuals by 1959.[19]
1966 - Randell opens the pioneering Charing Cross gender clinic in London, and his colleague Harry Benjamin publishesThe Transsexual Phenomenon.
25–27 July 1969 - The First International Symposium forGender Identity: Aims, Functions and Clinical Problems of a Gender Identity Unit, took place atThe Piccadilly Hotel in London.
1970 - In the case betweenApril Ashley and Arthur Cameron Corbett, their marriage was annulled on the basis that Ashley, a transsexual woman, was a man under then-current British law, setting a legal precedent for trans people in Britain, so that the birth certificates of transsexual and intersex people could not be changed.
1972 - The release of the dramaI Want What I Want showing an early portrayal of a trans character.[20]
1973 - In late 1973, Carol Steele and another transsexual woman (Linda B.) formed the Manchester TV/TS Group (a group for "transvestites and transsexuals").[21]
1974 - The First National TV/TS (Transvestite/Transsexual Conference) is held in Leeds. The journalistJan Morris also publishesConundrum, a personal account of her transition.Caroline Cossey also undergoes reassignment surgery, going on to act in the 1981 Bond filmFor Your Eyes Only.
1980 -Julia Grant participates in the pioneering British documentaryA Change of Sex aired on BBC2, enabling viewers to follow her social and medical transition; also providing a snapshot of the Gender Identity Clinic atCharing Cross Hospital in London. The Self Help Association for Transsexuals (SHAFT) was then formed as an information collecting and disseminating body for trans-people. The association later became known as the 'Gender Dysphoria Trust International' (GDTI).
1986 -Sonia Burgess inRees v. the United Kingdom (1986), represented Mark Rees, a British trans man who asked the government to amend his birth certificate to allow him to marry a woman. Burgess and Rees's barrister, Nick Blake, argued unsuccessfully that English law violated the European Convention on Human Rights Article 8 (right to respect for private and family life) and Article 12 (right to marry) in its treatment of transgender people.
1989 - The Tavistock Clinic establishedGIDS, the first and only service of its kind in the UK for young people withgender dysphoria.
1993 -Christine Burns and Whittle begin working with Press for Change.
2001 -Lauren Harries undergoes gender reassignment and goes on to star in many British television shows and the International Transgender Conference is held at theUniversity of East Anglia continuing as a biennial event.
2004 - TheGender Recognition Act 2004 is passed by the Labour Government. The Act gives transsexual people legal recognition as members of the sex appropriate to their gender identity allowing them to acquire a new birth certificate, affording them full recognition of their acquired sex in law for all purposes, including marriage.[23]
2007 - Lewis Turner and Stephen Whittle publishEngendered Penalties Transsexual and Transgender People's Experience of Inequality and Discrimination (Equalities Review) which is instrumental in ensuring the inclusion of trans people in the remit of the newCommission for Equalities and Human Rights. In the same year Kele Telesford is found strangled in her home.[24]Jenny Bailey is also elected mayor of Cambridge.
2012 - Jackie Green, a transgender beauty queen, became the youngest person in the world to have gender reassignment surgery,[citation needed] having had treatment at the age of 12 to prevent the onset of puberty.[citation needed] She was subsequently the first trans person to enter the Miss England beauty contest.[25]
2014 - SecondTrans Pride Brighton includes the first trans pride march in Europe.
May 2014 -Hollyoaks reveals the character Blessing Chambers played byModupe Adeyeye to be transgender.
2015 -Church of England Reverend Chris Newlands, vicar of Lancaster Priory, was approached by a young transgender person who wished to be "re-baptised" in their new identity. The vicar created a new service as "an affirmation of baptismal vows where we could introduce him to God with his new name and his new identity."[26]The Danish Girl is also released.
September 2016 -Hari Nef becomes the first transgender person to cover any British fashion magazine,Elle.
2017 -Philippa York outed herself becoming the first professional cyclist to have publicly transitioned.
2018 -Shon Faye presented atAmnesty International's Women Making History event, where she gave a speech calling to "re-centre" underprivileged trans women.
2019 - Study by Paul Baker, a professor atLancaster University, found that of over 6,000 articles written in the UK press from 2018 to 2019, numerous were written "in order to be critical of trans people" and cast "trans people as unreasonable and aggressive".[27]
2020 -Isla Bryson is jailed for rape committed prior to transitioning, causing controversy when initially placed in a women's prison.
February 2023 -Brianna Ghey, a female 16-year-old British transgender teenager is murdered inCheshire, England. The judge sentencing the killers ruled thattransphobia was a motive in the murder.[28]
In October 2023, it was reported that hate crimes against transgender people in England and Wales had risen 11%, which represented 4,732 offences in the last year.[29]
Non-binary people as a group have long existed in the UK, however recorded instance of Non-binary people are scarce due to misconceptions and conflation around gender and sex, anderasure in the written record over time. Non-binary people still suffer from the lingering effects oftransphobia and lingering effects ofsystematic racism underBritish colonisation.
Cross-dressing is noted to have occurred in British society from the 14th century on. In 1394,John/Eleanor Rykener a prostitute working mainly in London (near Cheapside), but also active in Oxford, was arrested for cross-dressing and interrogated. In 1685,Arabella Hunt divorced her 'husband' Amy Poulter on the grounds that their marriage as two women is not recognised under the law, however initially complaining that Poulter was ahermaphrodite. In 1732, 'Princess Seraphina' (noted as the first drag queen in England) charged Tom Gordon with stealing his crossdresser clothing.[30] In 1812, surgeonJames Miranda Barry was found to be biologically female on examination at death and the infamousBoulton and Park case in 1870 took place under heightened Victorian societal legal and moral pressure on transgender peoples, both being acquitted in 1871.
In the early 20th century, gender nonconforming or third gender ideas begin to become widespread and accepted between the 1920–1940s. In the 1960s and 1970s, designers likeMichael Fish began to promote androgynous fashion, which were made popular by musicians such asMick Jagger,David Bowie andFreddie Mercury. As the 1980s progressed, the acceptability of gendered clothing began to break down (such asAnnie Lennox) and by the 21st century the gender spectrum had begun to become mainstream in fashion withunisex clothing becoming popular.
1666 - The proto-science-fiction novelThe Blazing World is published byDuchess Cavendish, a quasibeast fable which discusses gender roles in 17th-century Britain using contemporary science and mixing these with animal-genders such as bird-men
1701 -Edward Hyde, 3rd Earl of Clarendon becomes the governor of Jersey in the American colonies. Opening the post, he dressed as a woman as "in this place and this timeI represent a woman and ought in all respects to represent her as faithfully as I can."[31]
1907 -Mabel Batten gaveRadclyffe Hall the name 'John' after a resemblance to a member of her family which she continued to use with 'masculine' clothing for the rest of her life
1929 - William Sidney Holtom (1886-?) was outed by theNews of the World as a "Man-woman" who had successfully passed as male from 1914 to 1929[36]
1937 -Hy Hazell begins performing in London, known for her principal boy roles
1966 - The Beaumont Society was established as a support group for male-to-female cross-dressers, with its namesake from the androgynous FrenchmanChevalier d'Éon.[37]
Intersex peoples have a long history in Britain, with early history particularly inWales, often falling under the Greek notion of androgyny derived from Ancient Greek and Roman ideals inherently found in the creation myths such asAphrodite. An early English colonial subject of theAmerican colonies to challenge binary gender roles wasThomas(ine) Hall, a servant who, in the 1620s, alternately dressed in both men's and women's clothing. Hall is likely to have beenintersex as they were ordered by the Virginia court to wear both men's breeches and a woman's apron and cap simultaneously byJohn Pott. However other examples such as Mary Henly, a female-assigned individual in Massachusetts, was charged with illegally wearing men's clothing in 1692, as her wearing an opposing gender marker was "seeming to confound the course of nature."[39]
During the Victorian era, medical authors introduced the terms "true hermaphrodite" for an individual who has both ovarian and testicular tissue, verified under a microscope, "male pseudo-hermaphrodite" for a person with testicular tissue, but either female or ambiguous sexual anatomy, and "female pseudo-hermaphrodite" for a person with ovarian tissue, but either male or ambiguous sexual anatomy. In 1915 The terms 'intersex' for the individual and 'intersexuality' for the phenomenon were coined in the German language by endocrinologistRichard Goldschmidt after studies ongypsy moths. One year later, Goldschmidt used the term to describepseudohermaphroditism in humans, and in 1932 in Germany, the first intersex surgery to female is carried out. Surgeries in the UK for intersex people were undertaken atCharing Cross Hospital at this time. With the introduction of new writing on the topic, the topic of Intersex peoples began to introduced into the academic circles in the UK in the 1940s to 1960s when a more prevailing notion of tolerance began to take root.
940 -Hywel the Good's laws include a definition on the rights of 'hermaphrodites'.
1100s - TheDecretum Gratiani, a canon law collection states that "Whether an hermaphrodite may witness a testament, depends on which sex prevails".
1188 - Gerald of Wales inTopography of Ireland stated "Also, within our time, a woman was seen attending the court in Connaught, who partook of the nature of both sexes, and was a hermaphrodite."
1235 -Henry de Bracton'sDe Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae (On the Laws and Customs of England) classified mankind as "male, female, or hermaphrodite" and noted a "hermaphrodite is classed with male or female according to the predominance of the sexual organs".
1300 - TheHereford Mappa Mundi includes a depiction of a 'hermaphrodite', placed outside the borders of the world known to its makers.
1614 -Bartholomew Fair shows Dionysus engaging in contemporary gender discussion
1644 - English jurist and judgeSir Edward Coke wrote in hisInstitutes of the Lawes of England (1628–1644) on laws of succession: "Every heire is either a male, a female, or an hermaphrodite, that is both male and female. And an hermaphrodite (which is also called Androgynus) shall be heire, either as male or female, according to that kind of sexe which doth prevaile." The Institutes are widely held to be a foundation ofcommon law.
1792 - Anglo-WelshphilologistWilliam Jones published an English translation ofAl Sirájiyyah: The Mohammedan Law of Inheritance which detailed inheritance rights for people described as hermaphrodites in Islam.
1839 -James Young Simpson publishes an article on people described as having 'hermaphroditism'
1906 -The Cambrian newspaper in Wales published an article on the death in Cardiff of an intersex child who, at post-mortem examination, was determined to be a girl.[40]
1933 -Lennox Broster joins the Charing Cross Hospital hospital, and begins operating on intersex patients[41]
1943 - The first suggestion to replace the termhermaphrodite withintersex, in medicine, came from British physicianAlexander Polycleitos Cawadias in 1943. This was taken up by other physicians in the United Kingdom during the 1960s.
1960 -Georgina Somerset, the first openly intersex person, receives another birth certificate designating her as female sex.
1968 -Sir Ewan Forbes, 11th Baronet succeeds the Baronetcy as a man having been assigned as female at birth, andDawn Langley Simmons after sex reassignment surgery in 1968 wed in the first legal interracial marriage in South Carolina.
^David Clark, Between Medieval Men (2009), page 63, footnotes, citing Robert D. Fulk, 'Male Homoeroticism in the Old English Canons of Theodore', page 26
^The Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings, Neil Price, 2020, p.104
^Dryden, Steven."LGBTQ histories".British Library. Retrieved16 April 2021.
^Female Husbands: A Trans History, Jen Manion, 2020, pp.13-17
^King, Dave; Ekins, Richard (2002). Pioneers of transgendering: John Randell, 1918–1982. GENDYS 2002, The Seventh International Gender Dysphoria Conference. Retrieved 20 September 2014
^Norton, Rictor (2 January 1999)."Princess Seraphina, 1732".Homosexuality in Eighteenth-Century England: A Sourcebook. rictornorton.co.uk. Retrieved14 April 2021.
^Transgender History & Geography: Crossdressing in Context Vol 3, G. G. Bolich, 2007, p.121
^Oram, Alison (2007). Her Husband Was a Woman: Women's Gender-Crossing and Twentieth Century British Popular Culture. London: Routledge. pp. 4. ISBN 0-415-40006-6.
^Genny Beemyn, "Transgender History in the United States", from Trans Bodies, Trans Selves, edited by Laura Erickson-Schroth, Oxford University, 2014, p.4ISBN9780199325351
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