Apr 28
Trans Fads and Trans Panics in Early 20th-Century Germany
Trans Fads and Trans Panics in Early 20th-Century Germany
Is gender transition moral? Can gender-variant people be good citizens? Is transness a contagion? Do trans people pose a risk to “normal” people? These questions will ring familiar to anyone witnessing the contemporary attacks on transgender people in Europe and the Americas, particularly in the Trump administration’s attempts to repress “gender ideology” and limit access to legal and medical pathways to transition in the United States. Neither transgender identity, nor such questions about the morality of gender variation and transition are new phenomena, despite the reactionary claims that suggest that transgender people are a recent invention. In Germany in the first decades of the 20th century, debates emerged both within and beyond queer communities about whether trans people should medically and socially transition with the aid of new technologies and whether they would be able to play a constructive and upstanding role in society afterwards. At the same time, gender variation began to circulate popularly and gained a sense of allure that led to anxieties about transness as a social fad and potential threat. This talk explores the early history of scrutiny and skepticism toward trans and gender-variant people in Germany through conversations that took place in queer print and periodical media as well as in sources targeting the cis-heterosexual majority, which all engaged in the political work of feeling out the morality and value of seemingly novel forms of gender variation and trans personhood.
Join us in Leighton 304 on April 28 at 5pm!
