Time 4 Trans Justice

“There is nothing new under the sun.” A very old saying that may have some ring of truth to it. In every generation, there has always been people who were born to break the rules of strict gender roles. And there have always been people who don’t care what those roles are, and will do what they want to do, or feel that they need to do. Though this seems a new oddity in our culture, this has really been going on for millenia; only, not many people knew about it, nor did they understand what this really was. Female-bodied individuals always have “infiltrated” the “men’s” world by dressing in male clothing, and living as men. Today, this would be classified as “Gender Identity Disorder”. Then, it was just a woman living as a man. Or, more as was the case, a man living a normal life, then found out at death, or during a medical physical.

Every Monday, I will be posting the profile of a notable FTM transgender man that have made notable contributions to the world throughout history. Not much is known of these heroic individuals before the medieval period, but even in ancient times, there have been female bodied individuals who have lived as men, identified as men, and have transitioned, as best as possible, to presenting as men. For example, the Roman author, Pliny, witnessed one such transition and wrote that, “A transformation of females to males is not an idle story.” Apparently, this was known about long before there were any standards of care, or rules, or laws about Transgender issues. Generations before this, in fact. Not much is said, however, about theses courageous people before sometime in the 16^th century.

One such individual was Dr. James Berry, born Miranda Stuart in 1795. He entered medical school as a boy at the age of ten, then went on to become the first doctor to perform the first successful Caesarean section, where both the mother and child lived. He also served in the military, going on to become the Inspector-General of the British Army Medical Corps. He died in 1865, where it was found that he was anatomically female. However, this was denied by his medical colleagues. Gee—I wonder why?

Click here to learn more about FTM HIStory.