1970s transvestite taxonomies and the new queer frontier

Cousens, Emily and Pihlak, Aino (2025) 1970s transvestite taxonomies and the new queer frontier. Sexualities, Online. ISSN 1363-4607

Abstract

According to Kadji Amin, vernacular discourses in recent years have “exploded Butler’s heterosexual matrix in a way hitherto unimaginable” (2023: 91–2). Yet neither queer nor transvernacular taxonomies are new, and the separation of sex, gender and sexuality has been a contested topic among trans subcultures since at least the 1950s. Combining original archival research with feminist, queer and trans philosophes of gender, this paper argues that, despite being almost entirely unhistoricized, the identity category of “transvestite” represented one of the most highly organized, internally differentiated, and intellectually significant identity formations of the 20th century. We can learn a lot about possible futures for queer studies by turning our attention to the recent past and the untheorized archive of 1970s trans community print culture is full of lists of the constantly evolving identity categories available for members of these early trans communities. From the 1960s onward, united through mailing lists and a burgeoning periodical culture, a complex ecosystem of transvestite subcultures emerged throughout the Anglosphere. Trans people used correspondence, newsletters and magazines, to connect across nations and continents. Through these formats, they discursively constructed how to understand transness, queering prevailing understandings of sex, gender and sexuality. Examining the impulses behind and effects of these complex categorical formations historicizes and enriches understandings of the ambivalence of trans taxonomies today.

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