'Trans kids are not new': a historian on the long record of youth transitioning in America
Republican lawmakers pushing to restrict transgender children’s lives have repeatedly argued that trans kids are a “new phenomenon” and that genderaffirming treatments and policiesare “experimental”.
But Jules Gill-Peterson, a professor of gender, sexuality and women’s studies at the University of Pittsburgh, has found extensive evidence of trans youth in the US living as themselves and fighting to transition in decadesold archival documents. The records from American hospitals and clinics date back to the early 20th century, with examples across the US well before the existence of contemporary language on trans identity.
The Guardian recently spoke to the Histories of the Transgender Child author about her research and its implications as Republicans push legislation to restrict trans youths’ access to sports teams and outlaw gender-affirming healthcare. This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Why was it important to you to research the history of trans kids?
In the past 10 years, we’ve seen this sudden visibility of trans kids. There’s a lot more representation. But the common refrain is, ‘Trans people are so new’ and ‘Trans kids, my gosh! They didn’t even existuntil recently.’ And I started to think about what happens when you’re part of a group that gets framed as brand new. There’s this cloak of caution and fear around trans kids, this idea that ‘We don’t know what it means for a child to transition’. That ‘this is all an experiment’. I had a sense as a historian that these ideas were probably not true and wanted to do historical research that would challenge this, by showing that trans kids have been around for a long time.
How far back were you able to find documentation?
What I uncovered in the research is that children and youth have been finding access to trans medicine and transition as long as there has been medical transition – as far back as the 1930s and 40s. But even prior to that, children certainly lived trans lives where they would socially transition in childhood. I found evidence in the US that families and communities would accept children as a different gender than the one they were assigned at birth, let them go to school, use the correct bathroom, all of the things that are being fought over now. We can see that 70 or 80 years ago, we were actually in a more progressive place in some areas.
What pieces of evidence were particularly telling?
I found handwritten letters from trans kids to a famous endocrinologist, Harry Benjamin, who was known for providing trans healthcare. In the 60s and 70s, they would say, ‘I’m X years old. I’m a transsexual. I read about that in the news’ or ‘I looked up your work at a library, and it describes who I am’. They were from all over the country and they would ask if Dr Benjamin could see them, send them hormones, give them a permit to wear the clothes they wanted, talk to their family or teacher. It was young kids knowing really clearly that they were trans and going toe-to-toe with medical professionals. Suddenly, I had not only proof that kids were trans, but that they contacted doctors and tried to transition the best they could. It speaks to the remarkable ingenuity and resilience that trans young people have had for a really long time. And it’s pretty unimpeachable evidence that this is not a new social phenomenon. It’s not some trendy thing that kids are picking up now.
Are there specific stories that stuck with you?
One of the other incredible arc
hival finds was this woman Val, a trans woman who in the 1950s was trying to get surgery in Wisconsin. In the hospital, she did an interview with a psychologist and talked about her childhood, growing up in the early 1930s in a small town in rural Wisconsin. She says from as far back as she could remember, she knew she was a girl. There was no trans language in that household, but her parents accepted her. There was an understanding of what that meant, socially, without any need for a medical diagnosis. So her family raised her as a girl and arranged for her to go to school as a girl. Now, there are dozens of bills that claim we have to restrict trans kids because ‘we’ve never seen kids like this before’, but in reality we can look almost 90 years ago and see a trans kid who was accepted by her family.
What did you learn about who has actually had access to care throughout the history of trans medicine?
One of the biggest lines of difference was racial. White trans people were seen as having a problem in their gender development that could be corrected, and in fact must be corrected because of this inherently racist idea that white civilization must have its gender norms. So right from the start, we see that white trans kids get way more access to medical care.
Black trans children in particular are almost completely shut out. Instead of receiving medical care, they are much more likely to be arrested or institutionalized, put in the foster care system or juvenile detention. And they are much more likely to be diagnosed as delusional, schizophrenic or something else that blatantly ignores what they know about themselves.
How does that legacy of exclusion tie into the current efforts to outlaw gender-affirming treatments?
Most trans people do not have access to gender-affirming care. They never have, it’s never been the reality. We’re not even close. It’s primarily upper middle class and white well-educated families that actually have the time and the money to access care. So we’re now facing the proposition of banning forms of healthcare that almost no trans kids even have access to. The possibility of making things better and righting historical wrongs will stop with these bills.
And it’s a direct continuation of this history that is also a racial history. There is a lot of disposable income and time required to get care. If you have a trans kid, you need to advocate constantly and show up and testify against the bills. So working class families, families of color, people with less resources are way less able to do what it takes right now to access pediatric gender-affirming care.
Why do you think trans kids in particular have become such a culture war target?
Mainstream LGBT organizations for a long time weren’t trans-inclusive, and trans activists long warned that focusing on gay marriagewould leave behind other LGBT people who are vulnerable and wouldn’t be protected by marriage
– like trans people and youth. And that seems to really have come true. Trans rights have been turned into a wedge issue. And children are really easy targets, because we don’t grant them the privilege to speak for themselves and defend their own interests. So they are used as pawns.
Rightwing conservatives have been recycling the same language that we saw 15 to 20 years ago around gays and lesbians – the language of “child endangerment”, “grooming”, “pedophilia”, the need to “protect children” and “protect schools” through really restrictive laws. The focus on children is part of a coordinated effort and it’s not just in the US. We see it in the UK where there is no real access to gender-affirming treatments if you’re under 18. There’s a media campaign to shift the discourse to focusing on children’s transitions with all sorts of moral panics. It’s a really disturbing coalition, because you’ve got rightwing white supremacist evangelicals, but you also have politicians in the mainstream and people on the left who are trans-exclusionary and claim to be feminists. It’s a perfect storm.
How do you think people should be responding to Arkansas passing the first trans healthcare ban in the US this week?
This should be a wake-up call for a lot of folks. It’s no longer hypothetical. This is the time for people to reach out to the governor of Arkansas, but also to get involved in their own states and ask what they can do now before we see another passage of one of these bills. We should also be thinking more broadly, so we’re not just reacting over and over again to these bills. In some ways trans healthcare is analogous to reproductive rights and abortion. If you make it illegal, the need for care doesn’t go away. So we should be thinking about how we make this kind of care available to young people and how to show up for these children and their families, and not just make these laws the be-all-end-all.
This is not a new social phenomenon. It’s not some trendy thing that kids are picking up now
just like there is with rock’n’roll,” he says on the phone from his home in Lafayette, Louisiana. “They want to be cool. It’s like getting on a roller coaster ride, you know. They might be getting a little bit more than they think they’re going to get, but they want to show off to their girlfriend or wife.”
Much to the delight of audiences (and said girlfriends and wives), the toughest-looking or loudest-talking guy in the room isn’t always the winner. Some of the strongest competitors don’t have neck tattoos or bulging muscles, and not every winner is a man. Take London’s Shahina Waseem, a petite, stylish and so far undefeated woman who notoriously beat Johnson in the final speed-eating round in a fierce competition in Sacramento in 2019.
Waseem, who goes by the name UK Chilli Queen, remembers it well.
“That was probably the scariest contest of my life,” she confesses. “I was just in my head thinking, ‘How do I prove myself? I cannot lose now.’ And it was just ridiculous, because this guy – he’s a good friend of mine and he is brilliant at what he does – but he doesn’t feel the pain like anyone else, you know? He has this great big tolerance. He could sit there for hours and just look like a machine with no reactions, no tears, no nothing. And I am the opposite.”
When Waseem competes, she appears to enter a trancelike state. Between regular nose-blowing and the occasional “I don’t think I can do this”, she rocks back and forth as she chews through each challenge, eyes tearing through firmly closed eyes.
Waseem’s partner, Paul Ouro, and fellow UK competitor Matt Tangent are the founders of the League of Fire, an elaborate global ranking system where points are allocated to competitors when they successfully complete challenges. Until the League of Fire was established, the community was disparate and disjointed, and there was no official ranking of competitors.
While it’s not always peaceful and there can be plenty of trash-talking and pettiness, Ouro says the League has created a camaraderie among pepperheads that he didn’t anticipate.
“This isn’t professional, no one’s getting paid, everyone’s just stepping up to get bragging rights,” he says. After that first challenge against Johnson, Waseem and the rest of the competitors drank beers at a local bar and became fast friends. They visit each other when possible and watch each other’s livestreams, cheering each other on and sending each other super-hot and hard-to-get products available in their respective hometowns.
Some chilliheads have large enough audiences on YouTube that they can produce content full-time. Others become “hot sauce influencers”, which can help with funding travel to festivals. There’s a huge and growing market for extra-hot sauce: retail sales are up, probably in part because restaurants have closed in the pandemic. Trend forecasters are predicting that spicy foods are going to reach a whole new level of popularity in coming years: “Ultra-spicy is the new umami,” says a recent Guardian article.
One contributing factor is probably Hot Ones, a wildly successful web series by First We Feast where celebrities eat progressively spicy wings while answering well-researched questions from host Sean Evans. Their YouTube channel has gained 1.3 million new subscribers since March of last year, and the show’s been able to continue production by conducting interviews remotely with stars such as Matthew McConaughey and Jennifer Garner as they taste-test hot wings.
It’s also a compelling way to sell hot sauce. The show produces its own line that clock in at various Scoville levels – an innovative approach to funding pop culture journalism. A company’s inclusion in the 10-sauce lineup can be game-changing for entrepreneurs in the space, especially when it comes to the spicier selections like Kansas City’s Da Bomb Beyond Insanity, a highly concentrated extract-based sauce that consistently sends A-list celebrities into total meltdowns.
Despite the fact that it sent actor Idris Elba into a coughing fit, made the chef Gordon Ramsay cry tears of agony and Oscar-winner Charlize Theron said it tastes like “battery acid”, I too was drawn to trying Da Bomb, one of the worst-reviewed sauces on the planet. When I was notified that my local hot sauce e-store had finally received new inventory (it consistently sells out), I pulled the trigger.
Under Johnson’s advice, I had dinner before my tasting. He says it’s good to protect the digestive tract with alkaline foods like yogurt or a banana. I ate two moderately spicy cauliflower “wings” first to warm up. Then, after reassuring myself that if Paul Rudd and Halle Berry could do it, so could I, I popped it in.
First, the flavor: It’s terrible. I don’t know what battery acid tastes like, but if the makers of Da Bomb (who say it was invented to spice enormous quantities of soups and stews with just a few drops) said it was inspired by it, I’d believe them.
But it’s nothing compared to the shocking burn that followed. I ran to the bathroom for cold water, sticking my tongue out in the mirror, surprised it wasn’t bleeding. There was also an endorphin rush – not enough to block out the pain, but the high felt transformative, like I may never be the same.
I was careful to not touch my eyes, where capsicum residue on your fingers can wreak all kinds of havoc. Tears streamed down my sweaty face, and my stomach clenched up in anticipation. At a mere 135,600 SHU, I was experiencing a fraction of what Waseem and Johnson do when they eat peppers like Carolina Reaper, which come in around 2,200,000 SHU.
I turned to milk, often on the table in front of competitor at chilli-eating competitions, but it’s an immediate disqualification if they take even a tiny sip. I gulped it down, imagining myself in the ER explaining my state to frontline workers in a pandemic.
But true to Johnson’s word, the worst was yet to come.
I could feel the heat traveling through my digestive tract, but it didn’t get too far. Like severe menstrual cramps, waves of nausea sent me to lay on the bathroom floor.
Eventually, I couldn’t hold it down. Regretting the pre-tasting meal, Da Bomb departed my system along with everything else in a steady sea of vomit. Since throwing up is a postchallenge trick chilli-eating competitors recommend, I maybe evaded the worst.
I wondered how Da Bomb’s makers, Spicin Foods, were building on its popularity. I should have guessed: Jeff Hinds, president of Spicin, says the company cranked the heat, developing even hotter versions of the wretched stuff.
Da Bomb Ground Zero measures at 321,003 SHU, and Da Bomb the Final Answer comes in at 1.5m SHU. At Spicin’s tasting bar in Kansas (which is open through the pandemic), chillieaters have to be 18 or over and sign a waiver to try “the Source” – which is recommended to be used one drop at a time and not “around children or pets” – at an astonishing 7.1m SHU.
Johnson admits that even he is intimidated by the extracts. And yet YouTube
is filled with videos by amateurs and experienced chilli eaters all willing to feed an audience’s sado-masochistic taste for pain.
But reducing the allure to ego, thrillseeking and sado-masochism isn’t the whole story. For Waseem and Johnson, chilli eating has been confidence-building for the formerly shy introverts. For fans, it can definitely be funny. But it can also be deeply inspiring.
“I’m Johnny Scoville, and as you know I have issues,” says the triplebraid bearded host of Chase the Heat at the beginning of his Mad Dog 357 Plutonium extract challenge video, where he’s about to chug the 9m SHU concentrate. He’s nervous, he says – not because of the challenge, which he’s already completed twice, but because of a confession he’s about to make.
He continues, explaining that the party side of chilli-eating competitions had taken a toll. He’d been drinking too much, and it had become unhealthy. He was livestreaming the challenge not just to entertain the audience, but also to mark one year of sobriety.
“I’m a better version of me today. You guys don’t know how my life has changed for the better in the last year,” he says, explaining that his family life has improved, he’s fallen in love and has a thriving YouTube channel.
“So you guys can do this,” he says. “If you guys have something that you’re trying to conquer, you can do it. If I can, you can.” A few minutes later, he puts on a protective glove and unscrews the cap of the extract, wincing at the aroma before holding it up to the camera.
“First time I did it, it smelled like pain and regret,” he says. “The second time I did it, it smelled like misery and trauma.
“It smells like victory and accomplishment today,” he finishes. “Now get ready to watch my head change color.”
argued that the Democrats’ move to change the legislative tool is simply a grab to snatch power from lawmakers in the minority. The former senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina, a firebrand conservative Republican, recently wrote his own op-ed arguing that the importance of the filibuster for small states.
“The people who want to get rid of the filibuster are precisely the people the Founders wanted to protect us from!” DeMint wrote.
But even as support for doing something about the filibuster is growing, Democrats haven’t decided on exactly what yet.
Smith said: “Well, I think that decisions about what we need to do, and how we need to change the rules – if we need to change the rules – are decisions that need to happen in their own way. But it happens in a particular place and time. So I’ve come to the conclusion that I would vote to get rid of the filibuster hook, line and sinker.
“Others in my caucus haven’t come to that position. If we got to a point where somebody were to say, ‘We should get rid of the filibuster for this issue’, I would, of course, consider that. Of course I would.”
Whatever they decide, if Democrats do make a drastic change to the filibuster, they could come to rue it if Republicans regain power in the Senate in the 2022 midterms. Then, they would be the minority party facing the prospect of little input into legislation.
Asked about that prospect, Smith paused.
“Well,” Smith said. “I thought long and hard about that. And I thought about the issues that I care so much about that I’d be concerned that Republicans could overturn, like women’s reproductive choice, or issues that they could turn the clock back on, like labor, [or] people’s rights to organize.”
“But fundamentally, I believe that the core value in a democracy, in a republic … a majority of the people need to be able to decide, and we need to be able to make sure that that happens. If the Republicans were to take steps to roll back values and steps and rights Americans really cherish, then that is going to be a big problem for them.”