Nicholas Bray <[log in to unmask]> replied:
>Sorry about the delay in replying. I was digging out my M.Sc to check
>things over.
>
>I can only agree with Stephen on this one. However, It's quite possible
>that there were other FTMs before Michael Dillion and Lili Elbe but they
>weren't documented, or did not receive any publicity.
>
>Bear in mind that there would have been FTMs out there before then, but
>because they didn't receive any endocrinological or surgical intervention
>they would not have been documented as Transsexual as the term is a
>relatively new one. Before then, there were a variety of terms use for
>primarily MTFs, fetishism, or possibly terms used for homosexuality,
>sexual amnesia, psychical hermaphroditism etc.
It was quite common in the inter-war years for some "lesbians" to have
mastectomies. There are solid accounts of people born physically female in
the 18th and 19th century living out the balance of their lives as men. No
doubt some people did the opposite one way or another. As in various ways
have so many in other cultures. Who is to say which might meet current
definitions of transsexuality, or even the original definition? It's a
condition which must have existed forever but only became recognised under
a medical term recently, so the question is meaningless.
Now, if the twist were instead, how was this condition first accepted as
something "respectable" professionals would assist with, and was this, in a
particular country essentially connected with one patient, that would be a
quite different question, and would probably vary with the different
"professions" (cleric, doctor, lawyer...), but, again, I would suspect the
answer would be rather different in respect of T->Ms and T->Fs, and would
be made even more unclear by various claims of aspects of intersexuality
too.
As for Roberta Cowell, whose biography I read in 1970 and have largely
forgotten, I regret to say; I have here a section of an English surgery
textbook of 1958 which contains an account of an SRS done in England,
although the removal of the testes had to be done abroad for fear of
English law. The patient is not named. Would that have been her, or an
earlier case?
Anna
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