Notes on the Exhibit

Abbreviations & Terminology

Gender Review uses the term "transsexual" more than "transgender." In Gender Review, "transgender" usually refers to people who lived as their identified gender at least part of the time but did not have (or plan to have) surgery. The term "cisgender" is not used since it was introduced in the 1990s. Common terms for cisness are "genetic" or "natal" with "male" or "female". In the first few issues, FTS/"female transsexual" is used as we would now use transman and MTS/"male transsexual" is used for transwoman. TS is an abbreviation for transsexual and TV is for transvestite.

I will generally the term use "trans" or "transness" where Gender Review uses "transsexual" or "transsexuality". This is an attempt to balance my desire to both avoid using a term that could be harmful and to respect the ways that the historical actors identified and the nuances of the word. "Transsexual" has fallen out favour because it does not distinguish between sex and gender and because of its association with the medicalization of transness. However, both of those dynamics were present in Gender Review and were characteristic of many people's trans experiences in the 1970s and 1980s.

Quotation marks indicate that a term is historical and has a context-specific meaning that's important to convey. 

Exhibit Author Statement

History is never neutral and my lived experience and privilege have shaped how I read Gender Review and how I have written about it. I'm a white settler middle-class transman in Toronto and I transitioned in the mid-2010s. I chose to use and was able to access gender affirming medical treatments and a legal name and gender marker change. Transition was a relatively easy experience for me, in part because of my privilege and geographic location and in part thanks to the work of activists like Raj and Huxford. I acknowledge that there are many ways of being trans and that my path is one of many equally valid paths. I also acknowledge that structural inequalities often prevent transpeople from transitioning or expressing their gender in the way that they would like to.