Notable Transmen in History: The First Recorded FTM in History
Today’s entry in the Notable Transmen series is about Dr. Alan L. Hart, Physician and Radiologist. He was born in 1890 as Alberta Lucille Hart and was said to have identified as a boy from earliest memories. The FtM History site says this about him, “He transitioned in 1917 after graduating from medical school in Portland, Oregon. He had his surgery in 1918 and changed his name. Soon after, he married and started a medical practice. His second marriage in 1925 lasted until the end of his life. Alan published five books, including four novels and a text on his medical specialty (radiology). He had successful medical practices in Tacoma, Washington and Hartford, Connecticut. He lived as male successfully for many years without hormones till late in his life when male hormones became available.“
Obviously, this is not a new phenomenon, hatched up only in the last 20 years, as so many people would like to think. This has roots back before there were hormones, and a Harry Benjamin Standards of Care. It apparently has roots way, way back to the time of queen Hapshetsut. (But that is another story…) Perhaps going back further than that. My point is that if this was just a thing of the mind, or a feeling, would it have been so prevalent before there were any media attention about it? Or was the media attention a result of so many people identifying as the opposite gender from what they were born as? One would never know, but can only speculate. It gives cause to think, doesn’t it?
November 30th, 2007 at 3:56 pm
Thanks for this bit of history, I’m glad to know it.
One thing strikes me now as very curious. Throughout my life I’ve read of “Queen Hatshepsut” as “She wore a beard and declared herself Pharaoh in her own right” those terms. I remember the carvings show Pharaoh Hatshepsut with the royal beard and breasts, stylized distinctively feminine body shape, so that would be reason to think Hatshepsut was not trying to pass — as Pharaoh, if Hatshepsut wanted to be treated as male and depicted as male, I would think he’d have had the carvings changed to idealize his male image for history and either record some kind of transition or not.
It’s interesting to me because I do not know enough about the actual texts to know how Hatshepsut was referred to in relation to being Pharaoh and after assuming the throne. I am intrigued by the idea that he might have been an FTM and gained more than a kingdom in that coup… but at the same time, have to accept the possibility that instead she was a woman who assumed male privilege and treated it in that way so as to keep her gender identity while holding a title assumed only by men.
It’d probably take an Egyptologist to get anything of Hatshepsut’s real character from the art and inscriptions, perhaps Pharaoh Hatshepsut was one of those people more comfortably with androgyny than I am and enjoyed the gender-bending of displaying breasts and beard together, wasn’t touchy about pronouns. But it leaves me very curious about the pronouns used nonetheless, and about whether this was a straight woman’s political coup in a patriarchal system or an early genderqueer person seizing a personal triumph.
It’s a cool story. But it still seems a bit off to refer to Hatshepsut as Queen since she (if she was a she) was Pharaoh. I seem to recall before becoming Pharaoh Hatshepsut, she was Queen and consort to a previous Pharaoh.
Sorry to noodle on about that, but this is a very interesting topic!
Robert