Transgender-related behavior, such as cross-dressing, as well as surgeries to alter primary sexual characteristics, have a long history.  This history is important since the historical context of a family member's disclosure of a transgender identity, or coming out, helps shape how families cope with this event.  We can infer from the Bible that this kind of behavior was an issue in Old Testament times (Deuteronomy 22:5).  Likewise, the Bible mentions people who have had surgeries to alter biological sexual characteristics, such as eunuchs (Acts 8:27).  ​In the poem, Metamorphoses, Ovid, a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus Caesar, wrote about the Greek myth of Caenis, a woman who was violated by the sea god, Poseidon, and was granted her wish for male sex and invulnerability.   As a result, Caenis was transformed into Caeneus, a man.  

 

From the ancient Greeks, to Shakespeare and into the 17th century, men or boys performed all the female roles in plays.  For example, a boy would have played the role of Juliet in a 17th century performance of the Shakespeare play, Romeo and Juliet.  From the 16th-18th centuries castrati sang sacred music in churches (*1).  A castrato (singular form of castrati) was a male voice that was similar in range to a soprano, mezzo-soprano, or alto.  This voice was produced by surgical alteration of the singer's genitalia prior to puberty.  For example, Handel's Messiah was written in 1741. “But who may abide" is an aria for alto that was originally written for bass but was re-written by Handel probably in 1750, some eight years after the first performance, and often was performed by a castrato (2).  

 

During the colonial period in the United States, Jemima Wilkerson, led a Christian commune in the late 1790s in New York.  She was a self-styled prophet who preferred male pronouns (3). There were reports of women wearing men’s clothing in order to fight during the Revolutionary War (4).  In 1847, the book, Jane Eyre, was published by Currer Bell, whom readers later learned was the pen name of Charlotte Brontë (5).  Also in 1847, during the antebellum period before the Civil War, Elizabeth Newcomb enrolled as "Bill Newcomb" in Company D of the Missouri Mounted Volunteers at Ft. Leavenworth (5).  Bill Newcomb was discharged when he was thought to be disguised as a woman.  In 1849, Elvira Field cross dressed and presented herself as Charles Douglass, secretary to James J. Strang, leader of a Mormon sect located on Beaver Island near Mackinac, MI (5).  The Oneida Community, a religious community that was established in 1848 near Oneida, NY, was a utopian religious sect that believed in ideas of gender that were revolutionary for the time, including clothing for women that was considered to be masculine (5).  During the Civil war, there were reports that more than 400 women disguised themselves as men to serve as soldiers (6).  Also female impersonators were commonly seen in minstrel shows (early 19th-early 20th century) and Vaudeville acts (e.g., Julian Eltinge; 1904) (7).

 

Christine Jorgensen was the first widely known person to undergo sex reassignment surgery in 1952 (8).  From the 1950s-1980s, many major film and television actors have played roles that involved cross-dressing including Milton Berle, Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, Flip Wilson, Tom Hanks, Dustin Hoffman, and Julie Andrews.  From the 1990s to today though there has been a shift away from cross dressing for comedy to movies and TV shows depicting cross dressing and transgender people as an identity and lifestyle.  Some examples of movies during this time period that involved cross-dressing include The Bird Cage (Robin Williams), Diary of a Mad Black Woman (Tyler Perry), and Hairspray (John Travolta).  Meanwhile, more recent TV shows such as Ugly Betty (Rebecca Romijn) and Transparent (Jeffrey Tambor) involved transgender characters.

 

In March 2021, Dr. Rachel Levine, a transgender pediatrician who was the state of Pennsylvania's Secretary of Health, was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the nation's Assistant Secretary for Health, making her the highest ranking transgender official in the U.S. government according to this Washington Post article.  Just days after this nomination was announced in January 2021, an Executive Order was signed that reversed the ban that was imposed in 2017 on transgender troops serving in the U.S. military.

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History of the clinical treatment of transgender-related behavior

If you are interested in the history of the clinical treatment of transgender-related behavior from the 19th century until today, this information is available on the Clinical History page.

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Proportion of people with a transgender identity

This long history, combined with awareness of the proportion of transgender people in the US population, may help a family who has a member with this identity to place this characteristic within its context.  Although just a small proportion of children, youth (9; about 1.8% of students in grades 9-12 or about 273,000 youth), and adults in the US report a transgender identity (between 0.5-1.3%; or about 1.4 million adults), this identity gets a lot of attention (10).  A recent Gallup survey found that the proportion of people who report a transgender identity has been rising over the past three generation groups from 0.2% in Generation X (born 1965-1980), 1.2% among Millennials (born 1981-1986), to 1.8% in Generation Z (born 1997-2002).  Parents have increasingly reported that their children are claiming a transgender identity (11) and want to seek treatment for it (12). While a recent survey found that about one-fifth of transgender adults over the age of 45 have not told anyone about their gender identity, the percentage of transgender adults who get "gender-affirming" surgery has been increasing in recent years (13).  The science on what might cause people to have a transgender identity is still developing.  There are a variety of perspectives on its causes and not all of them are supported with scientific evidence.  More information about this topic is available in the "Etiology, treatment, & outcomes" section that is directed at mental health clinicians.  Although this information is written for a clinical audience, other readers may find it to be of interest.  In particular, non-clinicians may be interested in either the book, Understanding Gender Dysphoria Navigating Transgender Issues in a Changing Culture, by Yarhouse (2015) or the book, Gender Identity Disorder and Psychosexual Problems in Children & Adolescents, by Zucker (1995; see especially chapters 6-7).

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Everyone in the family is affected when a family member has a transgender identity.  

• About 25-50% of transgender people report that they are parents (14) 

• About 70% of transgender parents report that they maintain contact with their children (15)  

When a transgender family member comes out, other family members may become confused about their identity in relationship to the transgender family member, as well as experiencing grief and stigmatization (16).

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Despite the small percentage of transgender people who identify with a religious denomination, the church has boosted the visibility of the gender identity topic.  One way some denominations have drawn attention to this topic is with position statements, while others have offered a full welcome to transgender people.  Yet only about 2% of transgender people identify with a religious denomination (17).  While this percentage is a small one, about half of transgender people who identify as Christian say they are "evangelical" or "born again."  This situation raises challenging theological questions, and clergy and lay people may be unprepared to deal with this issue. More information is available about this issue in Resources for Clergy & Churches.

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*The citations on this page come from the research literature and other publications and are available upon request.

1. Riding, 2006; Wheadon, 2009; Bauman & Feldman, 1994

2. Riding, 2006

3. Morris, 2019

4. Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 2019; Cashier, Albert D. J., 1913; Terris, 2013

5. Harvey, 2020

6. Fischer, 2001

7. DeCaro, 2019

8. McQuiston, 1989

9. Johns et al 2019

10. Zucker 2017; Flores et al 2016

11. Singal 2018

12. Chen, Fuqua, & Eugster 2016

13. Canner et al 2018

14. Stotzer, Herman & Hasenbush 2014

15. Grant et al 2011

16. Whitley, 2013; Veldorale-Griffin & Darling 2016; Canfield-Lenfest, 2008; Norwood, 2012, 2013b

17. Djupe 2017