‘I Didn't Meet Anyone Like Myself for Seven Years’: Australia's Transgender History

Australia has a transgender history. Despite the cacophony of screams echoing in comments sections across the internet, mostly from the burner accounts of bigots terrified of a world of experiences existing outside their own bubble, trans and gender diverse people have always been here. Their fight to exist isn’t new. 

In early 1900s Australia, they were persecuted. Now, a book has sought to immortalise their stories. 

Transgender Australia: A History Since 1910 is a non-fiction account of trans experience in Australia since the 1900s. Noah Riseman, professor of history at the Australian Catholic University, and author of the book, spent years interviewing hundreds of trans Australians, fusing research with oral histories to produce an account of the struggles, activism, anguish and lives that have gone to the fight for the right to live authentically without discrimination. 

The book comes at a time when anti-trans sentiment, imported directly from the conservative hellmouths of the US and UK, has flooded Australia with fear-mongering misinformation. It is in our commercial media, it is in our politics, baiting the thousands of Australians who reckon they’ve never met a trans person into playing football with the rights of one of our most marginalised communities. 

“That hatred isn't new,” Riseman told VICE. 

“I think the book shows that the struggles now aren't new…. It is disappointing that the struggles now aren't new. But I think it's also important to recognise how much progress has been made.”

After his earlier works, Pride in Defence and Serving in Silence – both written about the unsung contributions of LGBTQ people in the Australian defence forces – the historian was inspired to write the first book on Australian trans history, exploring progress and ongoing battles, and memorialising the contributions of trans and gender diverse people to Australia’s cultural fabric over decades.

“I was over the moon when I was contacted,” Jonathan Paré, cofounder of Transgender Liberation and Care, an early transgender support group formed in 1995 said. Paré was one of Riseman’s interview subjects for the book, and told VICE he had spent “most of his life” being an activist, either as a trans person or as a student.

“A lot of us have really bled for this,” said Paré. “You achieve a lot and it just disappears into the ether. It's almost like it didn't happen, but it did. And it was really important.”

Paré, now in his 50s, recounted the climate of 90s Australia. He’d set up Transgender Liberation and Care at a time when trans people “weren’t illegal but weren’t legal”.

“I didn't meet anyone like myself for seven years. I just slotted into the world and just tried to get on with my life, you know, simulate the male life as best you can kind of a scenario, which is what the medical people told you to do.”

“We were lectured not to associate with people like ourselves, ‘you don't want to draw attention to yourselves, you want to slot into society and assimilate’.”

Conducting a research project at university, Paré interviewed trans men and women about their experiences being transgender. As Riseman wrote in Transgender Australia, bringing trans people together to discuss matters of concern was surprisingly innovative for the time.

“Most other Australian trans research was either medical/psychological or dealt with trans people one-on-one instead of in focus groups,” Riseman wrote.

“We also interviewed ourselves and documented everything from our own minds and experiences and a research report was written,” Paré said. “It highlighted a number of areas that needed to be addressed. The biggest gap initially was social isolation. We were all isolated from each other. We were all actively encouraged to remain separate through Monash Medical Centre’s programme.”

“Trans women, in particular, were warned of two degrees of separation. If you're with another trans person, and that person is spotted, you will be spotted and you will be outed, and it could ruin your life. So basically: stay away from anyone like yourselves.”

It’s only in the last 20 years that trans people have been more visible in the media and everyday life. In the 90s, even if healthcare was granted to trans patients from the few doctors willing to provide it, they were encouraged to hide their transness. Even in the 90s, existence was barely tolerated, assimilation encouraged.

Paré’s story is just one among hundreds that make up Australia’s trans history.

But living memory could only go back so far. The book was supplanted by various texts on trans history, as well as newspaper clippings from the early 1900s that depicted various people over time who were arrested for wearing clothes of another gender.

“Oral histories were always going to be central to this,” Riseman said. “The youngest person I interviewed was 20 and the oldest was 89, Rosemary Langton, who founded Seahorse – the first trans group in Australia. She was amazing.”

“With living memory, there was quite a bit from the 90s onward. And then it was possible to get the 80s, particularly in Sydney, and it was possible to get back to the 70s in some cases. And there were a small number of people who were able to talk a little bit about camp life in the 50s and 60s, but before the 50s, you can't really do oral histories. And that's where newspapers and other sources came in.”

Homosexuality wasn’t fully legalised in Australia until 1997. Throughout the 20th century, people caught dressing in clothes for a gender other than the one they were assigned to at birth were arrested and charged with various offences, from “vagrancy” to “offensive behaviour”. By the eve of World War II, Riseman wrote, “two important patterns were embedded… the association of dressing with deviancy, and the association of gender crossing with a mental disorder”. 

Many phrases in common use today – “transgender”, “gender fluid”, or “non-binary” – didn’t exist back then. There is no way to know how those people may have identified had today’s language been available to them. Instead, Riseman framed those stories through “trans possibility”. 

One that stood out was a newspaper report about someone assigned male at birth who had been arrested for being dressed as a woman in a hotel. 

“Usually, when someone was arrested, the defence was that it was all just a joke,” Riseman said. “But then, you're in a hotel, in a private room, was it really a joke? A few years later, the same name, or almost the same name, was arrested for wandering the streets of Elwood in Melbourne dressed as a woman.”

When arrested the second time, the person told police “I must have a kink”.

“I think that one stands out because it’s likely the same person on two occasions, that's quite an interesting sign that this person might be what we now call trans,” Riseman said.

The book includes oral histories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Sistergirls and Brotherboys, including Kooncha Brown, the first Sistergirl officer at the AIDS Council of NSW, in a chapter focusing on Indigenous history.

One of Riseman’s biggest takeaways from writing Transgender Australia was that, although the ongoing campaign against trans existence and its effects on the mental health of trans people was “disgusting”, when placed within a broader historical context, that vocal transphobic minority “aren’t the majority that they think they are, or that they say they are”. 

“One adage I come back to – someone I interviewed said to me once – ‘the louder they shout, the more we know we're winning’.”

“That's not to take away from the pain and the awful effects of what these people's messages do. But they're losing and they're gonna lose. And the reason they're gonna lose is because trans people are gonna keep fighting back, and so are their allies. And I think one big thing that's changed from the previous years of activism [is that] there were always allies, but I think there's a lot more of them now. And we're gonna stand strong with our trans siblings.”

The story of trans lives, activism and rights in Australia is fraught with bleak juxtaposition. Trans people are more visible than ever today, and yet, with career transphobes campaigning in the news, anti-trans rallies cropping up, moral panics over gender-affirming care for minors being pushed by disingenuous actors, and suicide rates for trans and gender diverse people consistently at twice the rate of their cis counterparts, it would seem “progress” is eking. 

But in providing a historical backdrop for the still-pushing wave of progress, Transgender Australia serves as a testament, and tribute, to the stories, experiences, and achievements of ordinary and extraordinary individuals who have courageously sought to live authentically.

“I think in reality, every single trans person is an activist, just living their life on a daily basis,” Paré said. “And behind the public faces that you might meet or see, there are teams of invisible trans people assisting those people to achieve whatever they need to achieve. It's very much all for one, one for all one.” 

“Putting our history into a document and releasing it publicly… It means that my family, friends, strangers, people studying, generations as they come through, they can actually pick this book up and read it. And it makes us real.”

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