Browse the Library of Congress Online Catalog to locate relevant materials by subject:
Please note: The terminology used in both scholarly and popular texts varies widely over time and space. Terms that may seem inconsistent with modern definitions can be useful and often necessary when researching historical materials.
- Female masculinity
- Feminity/Masculinity
- Female impersonators--Portraits.
- Gender Nonconformity.
- Gender Identity.
- Cross-dressing.
- Cross dressers portraits
- Intersexuality..
- Masquerade or Male/Female Mimic
- Sex Change
- Sex role.
- Transgender people.
- Transgender people--Biography.
- Transgender people--Fiction.
- Transgender people in motion pictures.
- Transgender people in literature.
- Transsexualism.
- Transsexualism--United States.
Search By Personal or Organization Name:
- Maria Van Antwerpen (Dutch, 1719-1781). Served three times as a male soldier and twice married a woman.
- Alan L. Hart, 1890-1962
- Angela Douglas1943-2007) and/orTranssexual Action Organization (TAO)
- Havelock Ellis, 1859-1939
- Reed Erickson (1917-1992) orErickson Educational Foundation (EEF)
- Langley Porter Institute
- Louise Lawrence
- Red Jordan
- Seahorse Club (Australia)
- Tiffany Club (Wayland, MA)
- Hannah Snell
Historical Terms and Vernacular:
- Eonism/Eonists
- Androgyne
Search by Call Number Range
- TR681 (pictoral works)
- HQ77 (periodicals)
Transvestia: Digital Collection External"In 1960, Virginia Prince founded Transvestia magazine. Published six times a year in Los Angeles by Chevalier Publications, 1980-1986, it was edited by Prince until 1980, and then sold to Carol Beecroft, who acted as editor until 1986. Transvestia was the first widely-distributed magazine focused on the crossdressing community."
- Transgender Archives from University of Victoria External
"The Transgender Archives at the University of Victoria (UVic) is dedicated to acquiring and making accessible the documentary heritage of persons and organizations that have worked for the betterment of transgender people. This digital collection includes newsletters and ephemera reproduced from the holdings of UVic Libraries’ Special Collections & University Archives."
"The Newsletter Exclusively for F-M Men" (female-to-male trans men.)
Request issues at ask.loc.gov or access on-site only via the database Archives of Sexuality and Gender.
- Transfa*g Rag: Information & Networking for Gay/Bi Transmen Digital Collection External
Published/Created: 1986
Library catalogs are themselves historical artifacts, representing the policies, practices, and language of the time period in which the catalog records were first created. As such, terms which are now considered outdated are often necessary to employ when doing historical research. For example, searching the catalog for "Transgender--Periodical" will only bring up more recent titles. For earlier works, try searching with the vernacular specific to that time period. For earlier Transgender Periodicals, for example, you might try searching under Transsexual--Periodicals.
To find additional periodicals, search the Library of Congress Online Catalog
- Gender Identity--Periodicals
- Gender nonconformity--Periodicals
- Human Rights--Periodicals
- Cross-dressers--United States--Periodicals
- Sex change--Periodicals
- Transgender People--Periodicals
- Transsexualism--Periodicals
The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are included when available.
Turnabout: A Magazine of Transvestismno. 1- June 1963. HQ77 .T8.
Also available online via the Digital Transgender Archive.Began in Sept. 1988.
WMLC 93/3372.Began in 1997; ceased in 2019.
RC560.G45 I58
ISSN: 1434-4580
- Femme Mirror by Society for the Second Self
Published/Created: 1976-?
- Transvestia by Virginia Prince
Published/Created: Two Issues in 1952. Restarted in 1960-1986
Considered to be the first known Trans periodical in the United States
Call Number: HQ77.9 .O66 2019
ISBN: 9781936932597
Published/Created: 2019-06-11
Independently published from 2009 to 2018, Original Plumbing grew from a Bay Area zine to a nationally acclaimed print quarterly dedicated to trans men. For nearly ten years, the magazine was the premier resource focused on their experiences, celebrations, and imaginations, featuring writing on both playful and political topics like selfies, bathrooms, and safer sex; interviews with queer icons such as Janet Mock, Silas Howard, Margaret Cho, and Ian Harvie; and visual art, photography, and short fiction.
Call Number: WMLC 93/4932
Published/Created: Wayland, Mass, 1985-
See AlsoWhat a top librarian’s road trip reveals about America’s libraries — and democracyPublic Event Highlights Two Books and Major AFC Collections | Folklife TodayWhile Number of People Age 65 and Older Increased in Almost All Metro Areas, Young Population Declined in Many Metro Areas From 2020 to 2023Older Adults in Poverty Less Likely Than Those Not in Poverty to Live in Households that Receive Social Security
Das 3. Geschlecht - Die Transvestiten"a magazine for and partially authored by transvestites. It first appeared in 1930 and ran for five issues; Radszuweit’s press was destroyed in 1933 when the Nazi’s rose to power. The magazine, only available in German, was republished in a compilation volume by Rainer Herrn and Männerschwarm Verlag in 2016."
- Me by Tʻbilisi : Pʻondi Inkluzivi
Call Number: HQ75 .M4 Geor LCA Vault AMED
Pirveli LGBT žurnali Sakʻartʻveloši = First LBGT magazine in Georgia.
It can be hard to discern an individuals motivation for dressing or living as another gender. A common theme for early sources on individuals assigned female at birth (AFAB) who lived or dressed as male are accounts of soldiers or sailors.
Search by Name:
- Maria Van Antwerpen (1719-) See: De Bredasche Heldinne
- Trijntje;Simons
- Martigen Jans
- Willempje Gerrits
Search by Organization, Company, or Location
- East or West India Company
Find Articles on Chronicling America like:
- Was a Woman Warrior, Hannah Snell, Who Fought in Men's Clothes and Was Promoted, Eagle River review. (Eagle River, Wis.), 16 March 1893. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.
There are a number of additional (and older) sources in the non-English collections. Some of the earliest sources related to gender transition and gender non-conformity can be found in court cases and legal documents, newspapers, songs and folktales, and in published and unpublished books and manuscripts. Other sources for this information include military records and publications.
The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are included when available.
Call Number: HQ75 .L7
ISBN: 19002787
Published/Created: 1918
- The Transvestite and His Wife by Virginia Prince
Call Number: HQ77 .P7
ISBN: 67029440
Published/Created: 1967
Call Number: HQ77 .A78 1960
ISBN: 2005273037
Published/Created: 1960
Provides biographical information about a number of female impersonators, including some who wished to transition. Also provides useful information related to laws surrounding cross-dressing and female impersonation in New York.
- The Transsexual Phenomenon by Harry Benjamin
Call Number: RC560.C4 B4
ISBN: 65021552
Published/Created: 1966
Call Number: E605 .V43 1972
ISBN: 0405044852
Published/Created: 1876/1974
Read online via HathiTrust
- Emergence: A Transsexual Autobiography by Mario Martino; Harriet
Call Number: RC560.C4 M37 1977
ISBN: 0517529521
Published/Created: 1977-06-01
Call Number: TR681.T7 V47 1979
Published/Created: 1979
Call Number: HQ77 .K38 1976
ISBN: 9780312056001
Published/Created: 1976-12-01
Features full page photographs of trans women in Australia.
- The Transsexual Experiment by Robert J. Stoller.
Call Number: RC557 .S772
Author Robert J. Stoller was a Professor of Psychiatry at UCLA Medical School and a researcher at the UCLA Gender Identity Clinic.
The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are included when available.
- Female-to-Male Transsexualism by Leslie M. Lothstein
Call Number: RC560.C4 L65 1983
ISBN: 0710094760
Published/Created: 1983-10-01
- Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity by C. Riley Snorton
Call Number: HQ77.95.U6 S66 2017
ISBN: 9781517901738
Published/Created: 2017-12-05
The story of Christine Jorgensen, America's first prominent transsexual, famously narrated trans embodiment in the postwar era. Her celebrity, however, has obscured other mid-century trans narratives--ones lived by African Americans such as Lucy Hicks Anderson and James McHarris. Their erasure from trans history masks the profound ways race has figured prominently in the construction and representation of transgender subjects. In Black on Both Sides, C. Riley Snorton identifies multiple intersections between blackness and transness from the mid-nineteenth century to present-day anti-black and anti-trans legislation and violence.
- From Female to Male by Louis Sullivan
Call Number: HQ77.8.G37 S85 1990
ISBN: 1555831508
Published/Created: 1990-04-01
- Looking Queer by Dawn Atkins; John P. De Cecco
Call Number: HQ75.6.U5 L66 1998
ISBN: 156023931X
Published/Created: 1998-06-15
- The Man Who Would Be Queen by J. Michael Bailey
Call Number: HQ76.2.U5 B35 2003
ISBN: 0309084180
Published/Created: 2003-01-01
- Masquerading in Male Attire: women passing as men in America, 1844-1920 by Kerry Segrave
Call Number: HQ77.2.U6 S44 2018
ISBN: 9781476673615
Published/Created: 2018-04-12
Historically, American women have dressed as men for a number of reasons: to enter the military, to travel freely, to commit a criminal act, to marry other women--most often however to secure employment. During the 1800s and early 1900s, most jobs were barred to women, and those that were available to both sexes paid women far less. This book profiles both women who passed as men and were caught--even arrested--and those who successfully masqueraded for years. Whatever the motive, all took part in a common rebellion against an economic and social system that openly discriminated against them.
- A Strange Sort of Being by Bambi L. Lobdell
Call Number: HQ77.8.L63 L63 2012
ISBN: 9780786448050
Published/Created: 2011-11-30
Born in 1829 to a working-class family in upstate New York, Lucy Ann Lobdell was not your average girl. Donning her brother's clothes, she worked on the farm and in her father's saw mill, and demonstrated marksmanship skills that earned her the nickname "The Female Hunter of Delaware County." After leaving home, she moved to the frontier, married a woman, and lived for sixty years as a man named "Joe." Because of nineteenth century social restrictions and gender expectations, Lobdell endured forced marriage, arrest, and incarceration in an insane asylum. Although twentieth-century scholars have labeled her a lesbian, this study incorporates queer theory, analysis of stories about Lucy and Joe, and Lobdell's own writings to reveal that he was actually a transgendered man.
Call Number: HQ77 .D4513 1989
ISBN: 0312023677
Published/Created: 1989-02-01
Includes 119 cases of women living as men in the history of the Netherlands, nearly all of them from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Sources used include judicial archives, the archives of the VOC ( Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie-the
Dutch East India Company), Newspapers, chronicals, medical treatises, and collections of anecdotes and travel reports.- Transgender Employment Experiences by Kyla Bender-Baird
Call Number: HD6285.5.U6 B46 2011
ISBN: 9781438436746
Published/Created: 2011-08-01
Brings together the workplace experiences of transgender people with an assessment of current policy protections.
Call Number: HQ77.95.U6 B43 2007
ISBN: 9780151011964
Published/Created: 2007-01-02
Call Number: DC130.C52 A2813 1994
ISBN: 0720609151
Published/Created: 1994-11-25
This remarkable document in the history of transvestism provides a first-hand account of manners and morals in late seventeenth century French society.
- The Intermediate Sex; A Study of Some Transitional Types of Men and Women by Edward Carpenter.
Call Number: HQ21 .C3
ISBN: 10007316
Published/Created: 1909
- Transvestites & Transsexuals: Mixed Views by Deborah Heller Feinbloom.
Call Number: HQ77 .F44
ISBN: 75033254
Published/Created: 1976
- De Bredasche Heldinne by Kersteman, F. L.
Call Number: DJ411.B8 A585 1988
ISBN: 9065501053
Published/Created: 1988
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Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR)
Transgender Day of Remembrance was founded in 1999 to memorialize the murder of transgender woman Rita Hester in Allston, Massachusetts. It was created by by Gwendolyn Ann Smith, a transgender woman and friend of Rita Hester.
Transgender Day of Remembrance was founded in 1999 to memorialize the murder of transgender woman Rita Hester in Allston, Massachusetts. It was created by by Gwendolyn Ann Smith, a transgender woman and friend of Rita Hester.
Remembering Rita Hester External
On Nov. 20 transgender activists and their allies will gather in Allston to remember Rita Hester, a woman whose murder 10 years ago shook the local trans community to its core and transformed the way people across the country respond to anti-transgender violence.
GLAAD: Trans Day of Remembrance External
Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR) is an annual observance on November 20 that honors the memory of the transgender people whose lives were lost in acts of anti-transgender violence.
Every year on 20 November, we remember and honour the lives of trans and gender-diverse people reported murdered in the past 12 months.
On the occasion of the International Trans Day of Remembrance (TDoR), held every year on 20 November, the Transrespect versus Transphobia Worldwide (TvT) research project publishes updated data gathered through the Trans Murder Monitoring (TMM).
