Blast off! The meteoric rise of trans, 1994-2007

Fetish medicine, gay brainwashing, and the tech boom lifted trans into the stratosphere

For decades, the trans movement bumbled along. Ambitious gender doctors told judges that men could have vaginas; women hit tennis balls at the vaginoplastied men. Universities funded dangerous research, then shut it down after their employees exposed it. Even as mad scientists tried to defy biology, the normal rules of human relations seemed to apply.

But in the mid-1990s, the trans movement lurched forward. It soon became a terrifying juggernaut that CEOs, heads of state, feminists and comedians cowered before. Why? How?

It’s easy to imagine a world where gender medicine actually died out by 2000. Many of the patients were gays who fell into it because they were ostracized teens working as prostitutes, genuinely confused, or didn’t want to be homosexual. But acceptance and understanding of gays gradually grew over the second half of the 20th century. 

The other major patient cohort was paraphiliacs. In the 1980s, gender doctor(ate)s like Ray Blanchard started facing this fact – and the protocols dictated screening them out. 

Finally, many female transsexuals had quietly passed on phalloplasty for years, but by the early 1990s they were speaking out about their aversion to it. This revolt discredited the central premise of gender medicine that transsexuals need bodies that resemble the opposite sex.

Yet somehow as all these inauspicious trends converged, gender medicine didn’t die out. In fact it exploded. 

In this post I’m going to place big moments in medicine, law, pop culture and philanthropy alongside each other on one big timeline of 1994-2007. At the beginning of that period, transgender was a gang of edgy activists. By the end, it was the healthcare industry.

Like a lot of lefties, I’m inclined to believe that Capital is behind the whole shebang. But the truth is, I can’t find it back in the early days. In 1994, trans ideas were pushed by militant cross-dressers and academicky doctors. They had disposable income but not world-domination money. What strikes me is the weakness of those who opposed them: broke feminists and harebrained homophobes. I can’t find any malpractice lawsuits during this period, possibly reflecting skittishness among plaintiffs’ lawyers (and the general difficulty of winning a lawsuit over mental health care).

Why gatekeep if you’re not afraid of getting sued?

Once trans had grown unchecked into a glamorous, expensive commodity with an ethical claim to government funding and broad support among doctors and Hollywood execs, then Capital got in the game.

Gay men seem to be over-represented among patrons of trans. Some find this sinister. I don’t. Lesbians fight for mixed-sex locker rooms too. I think supporting gender identity theory became cool among gays in the 90s because a bratty propaganda campaign convinced them it was synonymous with helping gender-bending gay kids. Gay men are more visible than lesbians because (1) there are more of them and (2) being men, they have more money and power.

That said, it’s interesting that trans became cool among gays so I will note which individuals are gay in the timeline.

Running alongside these trans milestones: the internet. In 1994 I only used computers at school. In 2007 my rich friends bought iPhones. Trans is nothing if not an idea in people’s heads. That’s what the internet spreads so well.

The timeline notes when trans nonprofits were founded. Each of these entries likely represents an influx of cash to the trans movement from a rich person or foundation. Private fortunes ballooned in this era. Ambitious men with grandiose visions tried to change the world through philanthropy. Bill Gates, for example, retired from Microsoft in 2000. Some of these men were into “LGBT rights” or transhumanist med tech.

And now the timeline of trans escalation.

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1994

Fetishists are no longer excluded from the diagnosis that grants access to gender medicine. Released this year, the DSM-IV – which fetish expert Ray Blanchard helped draft – replaces transsexualism with “gender identity disorder” and specifies (emphasis added):

“Males with a presentation that meets full criteria for Gender Identity Disorder as well as Transvestic Fetishism should be given both diagnoses.”

The city of San Francisco issues a report about anti-trans discrimination drafted by the FTM activist Jamison Green, giving official imprimatur to unfounded trans narratives and diktats. It calls on gays to “fight for transgender rights.”

Jamison Green in 1980 and 1989.

Tim Gill, a gay tech bro, launches the Gill Foundation. He wants to avenge the recent passage of an anti-gay law in his homestate of Colorado.

Straight tech lawyer Martin Rothblatt undergoes genital surgery and assumes a female identity. Already a trans activist, he soon becomes a pharma exec.

Corinna Cohn is a gay teen boy taking hormones. He’ll soon undergo genital surgery. His influences:

“I found all I needed online. In the early 1990s, something called Internet Relay Chat, a rudimentary online forum, allowed me to meet like-minded strangers who offered an inexhaustible source of validation and acceptance.”

Gay advocates debut a federal bill, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). Trans activists demand they add “gender identity” to its protections. The gay effort is led by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC).

1996

Three million people view a British TV documentary about puberty blockers, which features a 13-year old boy securing a prescription from Amsterdam.

New York Times reports on transgenderism, “a burgeoning movement whose members are only now, nearly two decades after gay liberation took off, gathering the courage to go public and struggle for the same sort of respect and legal protections.” One of the subjects is a man who cross-dresses part-time.

1998

Dutch researchers publish the first study on puberty blockers as gender medicine. It reports the experience of one patient. John Money praises it at a London conference. The researchers begin a wider-scale study of puberty blockers that will become the foundation for the “Dutch Protocol.”

1999

Boys Don’t Cry premieres. The film dramatizes the murder of Teena Brandon, a young lesbian who pretended to be male.

2000

Gay rights org publishes a guide to US transgender activism that is hostile to gays. Authored by FTMs Green, Shannon Minter, and Paisley Currah, it’s part of a series of LGBT policy booklets funded by the Gill Foundation, the Billie Jean King Foundation, Open Society Institute, Ford Foundation, Gameworks, and others. 

2001

The Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association (HBIGDA) endorses puberty suppression in its SOC-6.

Evan Wolfson secures funding to form Freedom to Marry. Its success will redound to the benefit of trans activists.

2002

HRC launches its Corporate Equality Index to shame companies that don’t commit to protect their employees from discrimination based on “gender identity and/or expression[.]” Corporate America scrambles to raise its scores.

Straight billionaire James Pritzker forms the Tawani Foundation and donates $30 million to the University of Chicago’s medical school and biology department. In 2013 he will announce that he’s a woman named Jennifer. That year, Tawani will become one of the world’s most generous funders of LGBT activism. Pritzker’s wealth is from his family’s Hyatt Hotels empire.

Transgender Law Center is founded by Dylan Vade and Chris Daley, initially as a project of National Center for Lesbian Rights. 

2003

National Center for Transgender Equality is founded by MTF Mara Kiesling.

Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund is founded by Michael Silverman, a gay man.

The International Olympics Committee permits male athletes to compete against women two years after “gonadectomy,” if they’ve received “appropriate” hormone therapy. IOC will jettison the surgery requirement in 2016.

Jazz Jennings’ pediatrician refers him to Marilyn Volker, a Miami therapist who supports young children in pretending to be the opposite sex.

The Man Who Would Be Queen is published. Aimed at a popular audience, Michael Bailey’s book humanizes “autogynephiles” – a romantic term for transvestic fetishists coined by Blanchard.

2004

UN Commission on Human Rights resolves to protect the characteristics of “sexual orientation and gender identity” (SOGI).

2005

It’s difficult or impossible to get funded as an LGB org, as funders are no longer “ambivalent about transgender rights[.]” Rather, “increasingly, institutional LGBT rights funders now require some level of accountability on transgender issues as part of the grant-making process.” Grantors ensure trans people sit on the LGBT orgs’ board and they “check with the local transgender community to get their perspective on organizational inclusion.”

Minter wins a prestigious Ford Foundation “Leadership for a Changing World” award worth $115,000 over two years. Her trollish 2000 article “Do Transsexuals Dream of Gay Rights?” contemplated redefining gays as a subtype of transgender people. The Ford Foundation honor signals to the nonprofit world that snotty trans activism will attract funds.

LGBT rights nonprofits lobby the US Department of Justice to house men in women’s prisons based on their gender identity, regardless of whether they have medically transitioned.

ACLU files its first major trans lawsuit, Schroer v. Library of Congress. Its lawyers will mislead the court by arguing gender identity has “biological influences.”

Blue Cross/Blue Shield Foundation funds Fenway Health, a medical center in Boston, to staff up its Transgender Health Program. (BC/BS is a health insurance company. Zhenya Abbruzzese has explained why insurers like it when healthcare spending goes up.)

2006

UN reps and LGBT activists draft the Yogyakarta Principles, a SOGI wish list that encourages nations to ban “conversion therapy” of trans people and grant rights based on self-declared gender identity. The document isn’t binding, but it sets the agenda for nonprofits and left-wing politicians throughout the Western world. One of its authors will later state they did not consider the effect their manifesto would have on women’s rights.

Dutch researchers publish a study on puberty blockers, thanking Ferring Pharmaceuticals.

The Los Angeles public school system has a pronoun policy.

HBIGDA changes its name to WPATH to eliminate the reference to mental illness.

2007

In February, Boston Children’s Hospital opens a clinic that dispenses puberty blockers to children who want to be the opposite sex. Called the Gender Management Service (GeMS), it’s the first of its kind outside Europe.

Between April and June, ABC, CNN, NBC, and Newsweek run features on “transgender children.” At the end of the ABC show, Barbara Walters signs off:

“What if one day your child said ‘I am in the wrong body’? Could they accept it? Could you?”

Following the example of a smaller clinic in Philadelphia, Boston’s Fenway “replac[es] its three-month counseling requirement [for trans patients] with a single hormone readiness assessment visit.” This “informed consent” or “affirmation” model will soon become the national standard.

Fenway’s Transgender Health Program will grow from 90 patients in 2006 to over 1,200 patients in 2014. In 2023, Fenway will report that over 5,000 of its patients are trans or nonbinary. Not merely a moneymaker, the Transgender Health Program brings Fenway prestige as it partners with Harvard Medical School professors to position itself as a global leader in trans health.

Fenway’s gender doctors will explain their “success” in 2015:

“The rapid and sustained growth of Fenway Health’s transgender health care, research, education, training, and advocacy might be succinctly summarized by the mantra from the movie Field of Dreams: ‘If you build it, they will come.’ Clearly there are many who have not had access to care simply because it did not exist.”

Back in 2007, FTM Jamison Green and MTF Donna Rose quit the HRC’s “business council” in protest over its decision to leave “gender identity” out of ENDA. Trans activists see little reason to compromise.

Martine Rothblatt in 2014

This post was lightly edited on Sept. 29, 2024.