Alex Bakker - Others of My Kind: Transatlantic Transgender Histories

OTHERS OF

MY KIND

2020 Alex Bakker, Rainer Herrn, Michael Thomas Taylor, and Annette F. Timm

University of Calgary Press

2500 University Drive NW

Calgary, Alberta

Canada T2N 1N4

press.ucalgary.ca

This book is available as an ebook which is licensed under a Creative Commons license. The publisher should be contacted for any commercial use which falls outside the terms of that license.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Others of my kind : transatlantic transgender histories / by Alex Bakker, Rainer Herrn,

Michael Thomas Taylor, and Annette F. Timm.

Names: Bakker, Alex, 1968- author. | Herrn, Rainer, 1957- author. | Taylor, Michael Thomas, 1977

author. | Timm, Annette F., author.

Description: Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200306022 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200306073 | ISBN 9781773851211

(softcover) | ISBN 9781773851228 (open access PDF) | ISBN 9781773851235 (PDF) | ISBN

9781773851242 (EPUB) | ISBN 9781773851259 (Kindle)

Subjects: LCSH: Transgender peopleNorth AmericaHistory20th century. | LCSH: Transgender

peopleEuropeHistory20th century. | LCSH: Sexual minority communityNorth America

History20th century. | LCSH: Sexual minority communityEuropeHistory20th century. | LCSH:

Transgender peopleMedical careNorth AmericaHistory20th century. | LCSH: Transgender

peopleMedical careEuropeHistory20th century.

Classification: LCC HQ77.9 .B35 2020 | DDC 306.76/80904dc23

The University of Calgary Press acknowledges the support of the Government of Alberta through the Alberta Media Fund for our publications. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada. We acknowledge the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program.

This book has been published with the support of the University of Calgarys Faculty of Arts.

Copyediting by Kathryn Simpson

Cover image: Harry Benjamin, The Transsexual Phenomenon , 1966, photograph section. University of Victoria Libraries, Transgender Archives collection. Harry Benjamin, The Transsexual Phenomenon .
New York: Ace Publishing Corp, 1966. Special Collections call number RC560 C4B46 1966.

Cover design, page design, and typesetting by Melina Cusano

Aaron Devor

Annette F. Timm, Michael Thomas Taylor, Alex Bakker, and Rainer Herrn

Rainer Herrn

Annette F. Timm

Alex Bakker

Michael Thomas Taylor

Michael Thomas Taylor

Nora Eckert

Annette F. Timm with Michael Thomas Taylor

Michael Thomas Taylor

Our intention was to make visible the networks that the images reflect and the future histories that they made possible.

For us as curators, TransTrans , the name we chose for our exhibition in Calgary in 2016, means many things. It refers, of course, to the transgender transatlantic histories that give this book its title. It also points to transvestite and transsexual, the two medical terms and identities structuring these histories. The doubling of trans further signifies our intention to avoid telling any single history of trans identities but to instead explore moments of transfer, transformation, translation, transposition, transgression, and transparency. Instead of presenting a heroic story of influence and progress, our intention has been to emphasize processes of rupture, renewal, and re-appropriation. We have aimed to make visible the uneven ways that knowledge about sexuality moves across time and geographical boundaries through imagery and terminology.

Like this book, restaging TransTrans in Berlin after our first exhibition in Calgary continued the back-and-forth movement across the Atlantic that we trace in our research, following how these transgender stories returned to Holland and Morocco after traveling from Europe to the United States. The previous chapters of this book have emphasized that deep layers of interpersonal and cross-national relationships lie behind the images we are exhibiting. As we saw it, making visible these connections and the stories they tell posed several challenges. One was to represent the networks of individuals and institutions that produced the images. Another was to show how images had migrated between contexts and sources, reflecting a range of interests and intentions. We hoped that bringing out these two dimensions would clearly document the medicalized forms of looking and normative framings reflected in many of the images and how they were used, while also highlighting how the origins of the images in other practices and discourses situate them at odds to these framings.

Figure 6.1: Photographs from opening of TransTrans in Berlin, 7 November 2019. Photos: Paul Sleev.

Our network wall, which we discussed in the introduction to this book, was one first solution to these dilemmas. Another solution was to divide both exhibitions into two sections or areas. One area of the exhibition was devoted to the public circulation of images in print sources, including excerpts from the Steinach Film (discussed in a gallery in this book), and another was devoted to private networks of trans individuals sharing images and stories. In both exhibitions, this more privately focused area of the exhibition centered on a reimagination of the living room where Carla Erskine took pictures of her friends. In both exhibitions, we also created or commissioned a film in which people today respond to the historical material in the show. I will discuss all of these elements below.

Figure 6.2: Exhibition Layout of TransTrans in Calgary

Figure 6.3: Trans Histories in Print, north wall. Photo credit: Dave Brown, LCR Photo Services, University of Calgary.

In Berlin, the dual exhibition structure was realized by placing the public images from these transgender histories along the outside walls of the gallery, with the living room and the commissioned film occupying the centre of the space. In Calgary, we made use of two separate spaces in the gallery, which we called Trans Histories in Print and Trans Circles of Knowledge.

Figure 6.4: Trans Histories in Print, view of south wall towards entrance. Photo credit: Dave Brown, LCR Photo Services, University of Calgary.

Figure 6.5: Entrance to Trans Circles of Knowledge. Photo credit: Dave Brown, LCR Photo Services, University of Calgary.

Figure 6.6: Network Wall in Berlin. Photo credit: Paul Sleev.