The trans 'pioneers' trans rights activists would rather you didn't know about

From a thread by Malcolm Clark

What's the truth about the rise of the modern trans movement? Behind the largely fictional official tale there's a stranger, more interesting reality. There's a glimpse of it in this gem from the BBC archive; the first TV show made by transsexuals.

In 1973 the Beeb gave a group of "transex activists" their own broadcast. It was a pivotal moment and connects to many of the major characters and forces that shaped the trans lobby and disproves the official LGBTQ+ history like this nonsense from @washingtonpost.

In the fake gospel gay and trans people were allies from the start and trans people of colour played a leading role in gaining gay rights, starting at Stonewall. This despite the fact latterday icons Marsha P Johnson and Sylvia Rivera both admitted they were marginal.

The trans lobby invented this tale in order to present trans rights as the natural, next step after gay rights had been attained. The first obvious sign the story is skating on thin ice is that in the BBC show people of colour are rather noticeable by their absence.

Malcolm Clark @TwisterFilm

5./ The show is dominated by the glamorous Della Aleksander who launches into rather unhinged claims, a phenomenon with which we've now all become familiar, by suggesting "Everyone is an intersex". Della also claims 'the sex act is a transsexual act'. Who knew?!👇

Della was a key speaker the next year at the first ever non medical trans rights conference. Held in Leeds, it was a seminal event recalled by academics Richard Ekins and Dave King who acknowledge Della's role in their book 'The Transgender Phenomenon'.

The conference was sponsored by the Beaumont Society, the biggest trans organisation in Britain at the time. But far from the official story of how trans peeps were the champions of gay rights its membership was exclusively heterosexual. Gays were absolutely banned.

The Beaumont was an offshoot of the biggest trans group in the US, the FPE (Full Personality Expression) founded by conservative, heterosexual transvestite Virginia Prince who dominated the US trans scene in the 1970s. Ekins and King describe Prince as a trans pioneer.

Trans writer Susan Stryker also says Prince "has to be considered a central figure in the early history of the contemporary transgender political movement". This "despite her open disdain for homosexuals..and her conservative stereotypes regarding masculinity and femininity".

FPE's magazine Transvestia featured ludicrously stereotyped images and stories from heterosexual cross-dressers. Homosexuals were banned from it too and all related networking groups. As for Gay Lib it was often much too radical for Virginia Prince.

'Gender Variance Who's Who' reveals when gays picketed the American Psychiatric Association Prince bemoaned "this frightening premonition of things that may lie ahead". It was this and the promotion of outdated stereotypes that created distrust from feminists and gays.

In Stryker's rewriting of history tho LGB & T fell out not because of these attitudes but gay selfishness. The same year of that BBC show, gays won a victory. Homosexuality was removed from the DSM. Stryker claims trans people felt abandoned because gays didn't help them.

Malcolm Clark @TwisterFilm

13./ But the DSM victory was the result of almost a decade of work by activists like Barbara Gittings who campaigned long before the Stonewall riots specifically on the issue of demedicalising homosexuality. Here she is talking in the early 80s about her work.

So if trans people played only a marginal role at Stonewall and none at all in the biggest gay victory of the 1970s and gays were banned from the biggest trans groups how on earth did any link between LGB & T come about? Give the credit to Virginia Prince.

Attending an early gay conference as an observer 'she' suggested "we aid their cause when it will aid ours and extract from their experiences and their contacts with authorities and influential groups any contacts and opportunities that may be to our advantage."

Malcolm Clark @TwisterFilm

16./ Hasn't that been the game plan ever since? But let's return to that BBC show to explore just what early trans pioneers were thinking. Or imagining. Here's Della revealing a medium put her in touch with historical figures including "a chastened Adolf Hitler." 👀👇

In closing remarks Della confidently predicts transsexuality will transform society and be the key to future social progress; an overblown claim that sounds familiar. This was a view Della picked up from her mentor; one of the least likely trans pioneers of all.

In the early 70s Charlotte Bach gathered a cult following for 'her' bonkers theory that human evolution wasn't driven by natural selection but sexual perversion within which 'she' reserved prime places for transsexuality and transvestitism.

Charlotte helped turn trans rights from a slightly seedy cause to a New Age phenomenon. Sci fi writer and occultist Colin Wilson gave Charlotte a starring role in his 'Misfits: A Study of Sexual Outsiders' and argued 'her' theory might displace both Einstein and Darwin.

Wilson and Bach helped create a new image of trans people as revolutionary outsiders. It's hard not to think this helped create the milieu out of which everyone's favourite movie transvestite could emerge, in 1975 just 2 years after the BBC show.

Charlotte's star waned, not least because 'her' theories were impenetrable nonsense. It was only on 'her' death it was revealed 'she'd' been born a man. And had a string of convictions including being jailed for embezzlement and fraud. Nobody's perfect.

Charlotte Bach has been largely written out of the new fake 'gender identity' history. Just as other pioneers like John Money with his abuse of children, or Reed Erickson’s kooky Christian evangelism or dolphin communication have been sidelined or scrubbed clean.

Malcolm Clark @TwisterFilm

23./ Della's role is mainly forgotten too. Maybe it was the fact he let slip on the Beeb that he helped found a European Movement when -as Derrick- he moved to apartheid South Africa. It's harder to sell that to the woke than a trans person of colour joining a riot outside a bar.

Truth is, Virginia, Charlotte and Della helped popularise trans rights as much as Marsha P Johnson. They also bequeathed their movement a lasting legacy it seems unable to shake of undigested misogyny, entitlement and an enduring susceptibility to distinctly bizarre ideas.

Is it coincidental that a lobby which has created its own make-believe history, full of deceptions, and cover-ups, now advances policies with a cavalier attitude to their potential outcomes? Denying the truth about yourself is good training for denying the truth in general.