Frontlines of Freedom

Frontlines of Freedom: The Transgender Fight for Visibility and Rights

Transgender and gender-diverse people have always been part of the New York story and will continue to be. Despite societal fears, legal discrimination, and violence, transgender and gender-diverse people have built communities, persevered, and advocated for greater visibility and equality in New York. This exhibition highlights some of these stories.

“From the outside, the trans community can look small and tiny, but on the inside, it’s a vast universe of ways of doing gender differently.” - Susan Stryker, scholar of Transgender History and Gender Studies

*Please note that historical documents and references in this exhibition may contain outdated and offensive terminology and depictions.

Even before the term “transgender” existed, gender-diverse individuals could be arrested and prosecuted for simply existing.

Both legal and informal discriminatory practices continued into the 20th century and were used by authorities to regulate gender expression.

Police used a practice known as the “three-article rule” to harass individuals not wearing at least three articles of clothing related to their assigned sex at birth. Additionally, municipal commissions and the State Liquor Authority enforced bans on “homosexual-themed bars or tolerant establishments,” and venues with “rouged and beskirted male entertainers.”

Despite the anxiety caused by being under surveillance and the possibility of jail time, transgender and gender-diverse people still found ways to document, support, and express themselves.

Images:

(Left) Earl Lind, also known as Jennie June and Ralph Werther, was a self- described “androgyne” and an early voice in transgender literature. Lind published two autobiographical works in New York, including Autobiography of an Androgyne (1918) and The Female Impersonators (1922).

(Right) In the early 1900s, Webster Hall served as an important gathering place for New York City’s LGBQT+ community, hosting drag balls and welcoming diverse crowds. This image from a 1920s ball captures performers during the “Pansy Craze,” a time when LGBQT+ entertainers performed on stages to much demand. After this era of public visibility, increased surveillance and censorship of the LGBQT+ community returned.

In post-World War II America, Cold War era anxieties over loyalty, national security, and morality helped fuel policies against non- conforming people. In some circles, people argued that the LGBTQ+ community was morally weak, psychologically disturbed, and a threat to the traditional American family. The American Psychiatric Association in 1952 classified homosexuality as a “sociopathic personality disturbance.”

By the 1960s, as the battles for civil rights gained momentum, New York continued to criminalize same-sex relationships by using anti-sodomy laws. In New York City, the Police Department’s Vice Squad unit was tasked with “cleaning up” so-called undesirable aspects of city life, and regularly raided places frequented by the LGBTQ+ community.

Amidst the surveillance and marginalization, early LGBTQ+ activist groups formed chapters in New York, including the Mattachine Society and Daughters of Bilitis. However, transgender rights were largely left out of the conversation pushed by larger movements.

In an era defined by a clash of cultural values, transgender and gender- diverse individuals —navigating a world that often denied their realities and authentic selves —created ways to claim control of their narratives through expression, health decisions, activism, and the pursuit of mental well-being.

The 1969 uprising at the Stonewall Inn, a gathering space for New York’s LGBTQ+ community, was a pivotal moment in the fight for LGBTQ+ rights. What began as a discriminatory police raid led to six days of protest against police brutality and a lack of protections for LGBTQ+ individuals. At the helm was Marsha “Pay It No Mind” Johnson, a Black transgender woman, who recognized that transgender individuals were often left out of the fight for rights.

Johnson and fellow activist Sylvia Rivera founded the pioneering organization Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), which provided shelter and safety to transgender youth. While the LGBTQ+ community remained divided over transgender representation, STAR inspired other organizations, like the Queens Liberation Front, that helped transgender individuals.

In 1980, with the intent to clarify terms and promote accessibility, the American Psychiatric Association inadvertently fueled the flames of discrimination with the addition of the phrase “gender identity disorder” to the revised version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The term was changed to “gender dysphoria” in 2013.

The HIV/AIDS epidemic was devastating to LGBTQ+ communities. Largely ignored or misrepresented by the U.S. government, over 100,000 people died from the disease between 1981 and 1990.

New Yorkers fought on. In 1992, Buffalo native Leslie Feinberg published Transgender Liberation: A Movement Whose Time Has Come, as “an attempt to trace the historic rise of an oppression that, as yet, has no commonly agreed-upon name.” Her writings popularized the term “transgender.”

On November 20, 1999, several major cities held the first Transgender Day of Remembrance which remains an annual observance across the globe.

Images: 
(Left) Leslie Feinberg, Transgender Liberation: A Movement Whose Time Has Come, 1992-1993

(Right) “Demand a Cure for the AIDS Crisis,” 1991. Image courtesy of ACT UP New York Records, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library.

Decades of legal and social progress for transgender and gender nonconforming people are under attack nationwide. Such individuals are facing unprecedented backlash, discrimination, and violence as political and cultural leaders exploit fear and misinformation.

Unfortunately, alongside greater visibility, violence against transgender individuals, especially against BIPOC individuals, has exploded over the past decade. In 2023, for the first time in their 40+ year history as an organization, the Human Rights Campaign declared a national state of emergency for all LGBTQ+ Americans. According to the Transgender Law Center, “New York State ranks among the highest in the country when it comes to fatal transphobic violence.”

In New York State, advocates are steadfastly working toward awareness and the safety of transgender people. Thanks in part to the efforts of Cecilia Gentili, who lobbied for the rights of transgender people and sex workers, the New York State Gender Expression and Discrimination Act, which added gender identity and expression as a protected category to the 1945 Human Rights Law, was signed in 2019.

In 2021, the state repealed the 1976 “Walking While Trans Law” and in the following year, enacted the Lorena Borjas Transgender and Gender Non-Binary Wellness and Equity Fund into state law.

New York State has always been a leader in the fight for human rights, and equality for the transgender community remains a vital struggle.

New Yorker Imara Jones and her company, TransLash Media, are generating a different type of visibility for transgender people by publishing stories that focus on joy and dignity, rather than the harmful narratives of the past.

Today, the community is addressing the diversity often lacking in the post-Stonewall wave of activism. Rochester native, Javannah J. Davis, raises support for the Black and Brown transgender and gender non- binary communities as part of her organization, W.A.V.E. Women, Inc. Sean E. Coleman founded Destination Tomorrow in the Bronx to empower LGBTQ+ individuals through educational, financial, and support-based housing and health programs.

And Buffalo native Tiq Milan, a transgender advocate and public speaker who shares his experiences throughout North America, states:

“The trans experience exemplifies a tenacious and intentional engagement with life. It’s as exhausting as it is exhilarating, but freedom has always been worth it. Less monuments to the past. More blueprints for the future.”