In 2011, the American Samoa Men's National Football Team was rated the worst in the world. This is the story of how a woman, playing on that team, helped them score their first win ever.

Jaiyah Tauasuesimeamativa Saelua was born in the city of Leone, in American Samoa on the 19th of July, 1988. The tiny Pacific territory is a collection of islands and coral atolls, and is small even by the standards of Oceania, comfortably FIFA’s smallest confederation. The entire nation's population numbers just 60,000 – a mid-sized town in most western nations. However, due to its location in the middle of the South Pacific Sea, the Samoan culture has largely withstood interaction with Europeans. The Samoan language is still in use in daily exchange. Traditional Samoan music can be heard in the streets. And popular Samoan sports include sumo, fishing tournaments, netball, and sailing. But 11-year old Jaiyah wasn't interested in all that. She wanted to play Association Football (Soccer).

Now, soccer is hardly a common part of daily life in the sleepy capital of Pago Pago. At the time, the Samoan national soccer team was one of the newest in the world, having played their first organized game only 16 years ago, but they had already earned a reputation as one of the worst in the world. Their first match, against neighbors Western Samoa (themselves also a poorly ranked soccer team) ended in a 3-1 defeat. But perhaps their most infamous moment came in April 2001. While trying to qualify for the 2002 FIFA World Cup, American Samoa lost 31-0 to Australia - a still undefeated world record for the largest margin of defeat in international football. It's hard to live something like that down.

But that didn't deter Jaiyah. Growing up in Samoan culture as a fa'afafine (the Samoan third gender that roughly translates to "way of the woman"), she saw many others just like her playing soccer and other sports with the men. As she would put it in an interview with The Guardian later, "We are all given an equal opportunity to play sport".

In 2004, at just age 15, Saelua made her debut for the American Samoa national soccer team. American Samoa was once again attempting to qualify for the FIFA World Cup. During the first half, Jaiyah was substituted in. Taking to the field in full make-up, she quickly became known for her devastating, crunching tackles as a defender who "takes no prisoners".

From 2005 to 2010, Jaelua mostly sat on the bench, being given the occasional opportunity to show what she could do as a mid-game replacement. Her long apprenticeship would come to an end though in 2011 when the team would hire a new coach.

With the arrival of coach Thomas Rongen in 2011, Saelua was given extended game time. Rongen took note and later that year, Jaelua made her first start for the team.

Rongen had his eyes set on bringing American Samoa to the FIFA World Cup for the first time in its history. With only 11 teams petitioning to qualify for the Oceania conference of the FIFA World Cup, the four lowest ranked entrants would play a single round-robin tournament over a period of 4 days in November of 2011. The winner of the round-robin would then advance to the 2012 OFC Nations Cup in June.

Jaiyah walked into the National Soccer Stadium in Apia, Western Samoa, a little awestruck. She had never played in a proper stadium before. Although her team technically owned one, it was rarely used due to the fact that the village laws prevented proper lighting to be built, and so it was functionally unusable after sundown. Sure, they might lose the game. But here she was! She had made it! She was a real, actual professional football player on a real, professional football club playing in a real, professional stadium! Jaiyah doesn't know it yet, but she was already making history just by being there. The first openly non-binary and transgender person to ever compete in a FIFA qualifier.

And then, the unthinkable happened. Their first match, with rival Oceania island-nation Tonga, started to go...well. Ott and Luani played like their feet were on fire. The goalkeeper slapped away attempt after attempt by the Tonga athletes to score. And then, out of nowhere, Luani put one into the net.

The crowd of only 150 people or so, mostly Tonga supporters, were dumbstruck. American Samoa wasn't supposed to be putting up this kind of fight. They weren't supposed to be GOOD. They were supposed to to roll over and lose again, like always.

Tonga rallied, and slipped one past the goalkeeper. Jaiyah and her teammates roared in defiance as Tonga took a small victory lap, confident things were back in known territory.

The clock was running out. Rongen could see his team flagging. He called a timeout to talk to his team. The speech was short. "Next goal wins." He said. "Next goal wins."

Win. That's a word the team wasn't used to hearing. Jaiyah stared down her opponents. Many of whom were 6' tall, and built like American football linebackers. Some of them would actually go on to play in the NFL. They wouldn't get past her. Jaiyah threw her entire body into every tackle like a demon. She heard bones crunch. She didn't care. Ott and Luani took the hint. Luani passed to Ott. Ott tried to pass back to Luani but there was no opening. He passed to Jaiyah. Jaiyah tore off down the field like a woman possessed. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Luani rocket clear for an instant. She passed to Luani. He took the shot.

On the 22nd of November, 2011, the American Samoa National Football Team won their first internationally recognized match ever. Yes, ever. Coach Rongen declared Jaiyah Saelua "Woman of the Match".

The team followed up the win against Tonga with a 1–1 tie with the Cook Islands. The FIFA qualification was in sight. Then, needing only a single win in their last game against bitter rivals Western Samoa to progress, Jaiyah's little team that could fell agonizingly short, when an attempted goal by Luani in the final dying minutes instead hit the post, just before a last-gasp Samoa goal eliminated them from the tournament.

The team's efforts to redeem themselves are chronicled in the 2014 British Documentary Film "Next Goal Wins", in which Saelua plays an integral part, and also in a 2023 sports comedy-drama of the same name directed by Taika Waititi. Waititi reportedly considered Jaiyah for the role, but ultimately cast fellow Samoan fa'afafine Kaimana to play her part. The movie was released on November 17, 2023 to mostly positive reviews.

These days, Jaiyah continues to play, and in her spare time, coaches the American Samoan boys football team, the Leone Lions. During the 2018–2019 season, she led the team to the ASHSAA Boys J-V title, for which she received the "Coach of the Year Award" from the Football Federation of American Samoa.

Tell our stories.
#PRIDE #TransHistory

On the 6th of July, 1919, a man founded the world's first medical and academic clinic dedicated to understanding and helping gay, lesbian, and trans people lead a full and happy life. He died in exile, his life's work destroyed by Nazis.

Magnus Hirschfeld was born in Poland in an Ashkenazi Jewish family. The son of a highly regarded physician, Magnus was interested in medicine from a very early age.

After earning his medical degree in 1892 in Berlin, Magnus travelled to America, visiting among other stops, the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. While in Chicago, he became involved in that city's burgeoning gay scene. Struck by the similarities between Chicago and Berlin's homosexual subcultures, Hirschfeld began organizing a theory about the universality of LGBT people around the world. He began researching the gay subculture of other major cities of the world, reading newspapers from places like Rio de Janeiro, Tokyo, and Tangier.

Magnus moved back to Germany with these ideas in the forefront of his mind, and established his medical practice in a suburb of Berlin called Charlottenburg. In 1896, one of Hirschfeld's patients, a young army officer whom he had been treating for depression killed himself, leaving behind a suicide note saying that despite his best efforts, he could not end his desires for other men, and so had ended his life out of his guilt and shame. In his suicide note, the officer wrote that he lacked the "strength" to tell his parents the "truth", and spoke of his shame of "that which nearly strangled my heart". The officer could not even bring himself to use the word "homosexuality", which he instead conspicuously referred to as "that" in his note. However, the officer mentioned at the end of his suicide note: "The thought that you [Hirschfeld] could contribute a future when the German fatherland will think of us in more just terms sweetens the hour of my death."

This officer's suicide was not the only one. Magnus became increasingly concerned about how many of his gay patients were ending, or attempting to end their own lives, despite his best medical efforts. Less than a year later, Hirschfeld co-founded the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee with the publisher Max Spohr, the lawyer Eduard Oberg, and the writer Franz Joseph von Bülow. The goal of the committee was to undertake research to defend the rights of homosexuals and to repeal Paragraph 175, the section of the German penal code that, since 1871, had criminalized homosexuality, arguing that the law encouraged blackmail and was contributing to increased suicides. The motto of the committee, "Justice Through Science", reflected Hirschfeld's belief that a better scientific understanding of homosexuality would eliminate social hostility toward LGBT people.

Hirschfeld spoke out eloquently about the taboo subject of suicide and was the first to present statistical evidence that homosexuals were more likely to commit suicide or attempt suicide than heterosexuals. Hirschfeld prepared questionnaires that gay men could answer anonymously about homosexuality and suicide. Collating his results, Hirschfeld estimated that 3 out of every 100 gays committed suicide every year, that a quarter of gays had attempted suicide at some point in their lives and that the other three-quarters had had suicidal thoughts at some point. He used his evidence to argue that, under current social conditions in Germany, life was literally unbearable for gay people.

Under Hirschfeld's leadership, the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee gathered 6000 signatures from prominent Germans on a petition to overturn Paragraph 175. Signatories included such luminaries as Albert Einstein. The bill was brought before the Reichstag in 1898, but was supported only by a minority from the Social Democratic Party of Germany (the German left-wing progressive party) and was quickly killed.

The next two decades of Magnus' life were a balance between his medical practice, and fierce activism for the rights of gay people to love and be loved, without prejudice. In 1914, Magnus published his book "Die Homosexualität des Mannes und des Weibes" ('The Homosexuality of Men and Women'), an attempt to comprehensively survey homosexuality around the world, as part of an effort to prove that gay and lesbian people occurred in every culture.

Hirschfeld's idea, that homosexuality was normal and natural, made him a highly controversial figure in Germany during this period, involving him in vigorous debates with other academics, who regarded homosexuality as unnatural and wrong. One such debate concerned the supposed existence of the Hottentottenschürze ('Hottentot apron'), namely the racist belief that the Khoekoe women of southern Africa (known to Westerners as Hottentots) had abnormally enlarged labia, which made them inclined toward lesbianism. Hirschfeld argued there was no evidence that the women of the Khoekoe had abnormally large labia, and that, other than having black skin, the bodies of Khoekoe women were no different from German women. Hirschfeld wrote: "The differences appear minimal compared to what is shared" between Khoekoe and German women. Turning the argument of the anthropologists on their head, Hirschfeld further argued that, if same-sex relationships were common among Khoekoe women, and if the bodies of Khoekoe women were essentially the same as Western women, then Western women must have the same tendencies. Hirschfeld's theories about a spectrum of sexuality existing in all of the world's cultures implicitly undercut the binary theories about the differences between various races that was the basis of the claim of white supremacy.

In 1906, a military general named Kuno von Moltke sued the journalist Maximilian Harden after the latter had run an article accusing him of having a homosexual relationship with the politically powerful Prince Philipp von Eulenburg, who was Kaiser Wilhelm II's best friend. The series of courts-martial and 5 civil trials which followed has been described as "the biggest homosexual scandal ever", outing many prominent members of the Kaiser's cabinet and entourage in its wake. Magnus Hirschfeld was called to testify for Harden, telling the court that "homosexuality was part of the plan of nature and creation just like normal love." Hirschfeld's testimony caused outrage all over Germany. Because Prince Eulenburg was a prominent anti-Semite and Hirschfeld was a Jew, during the trials, the völkisch movement came out in support of Eulenburg, whom they portrayed as an Aryan heterosexual, framed by false allegations of homosexuality by Hirschfeld and Harden. The prominent newspaper "Vossische Zeitung" condemned Hirschfeld in an editorial as "a freak who acted for freaks in the name of pseudoscience". Another newspaper declared in an editorial: "Dr. Hirschfeld makes public propaganda under the cover of science, which does nothing but poison our people. Real science should fight against this!" As a gay Jew, Hirschfeld was relentlessly vilified by the völkisch newspapers. Outside Hirschfeld's house in Berlin, posters were affixed by völkisch activists, which read "Dr. Hirschfeld A Public Danger: The Jews are Our Undoing!"

When WWI broke out, Hirschfeld at first attempted to take an ultra-patriotic stance, reasoning that it might break down prejudices by showing that German Jews and/or homosexuals could also be good, patriotic Germans, rallying to the cry of the Fatherland. However, by 1916, horrified by what he considered needless suffering, Hirschfeld was writing pacifist pamphlets, calling for an immediate end to the war. After the war ended, Germany reformed under the more liberal Weimar Republic, and Hirschfeld purchased a villa not far from the Reichstag building in Berlin, founding a medical research clinic he called the "Institut für Sexualwissenschaft" ('Institute of Sexology'). It opened on July 6th, 1919.

The Institute housed Hirschfeld's immense archives and library on human sexuality, collected over a lifetime of careful study and research. It also provided educational services and medical consultations for gay, lesbian, and trans people. Among them Dora Richter, the world's first known recipient of gender affirming surgery, and her better well-known friend, Lili Elba. Hirschfeld himself lived at the Institution on the second floor with his partner, Karl Giese. People from around Europe and beyond came to the Institute to gain a clearer understanding of gender and sexuality.

On May 6th, 1933, while Hirschfeld happened to be in Switzerland on a speaking tour, a pro-fascist student organization made an organized attack on the Institute. A brass band accompanied them as they broke into the building, looted its contents, and publicly burned its books. Following this, the leader of the Nazi student group gave a speech, and the students sang Horst-Wessel-Lied (Raise the Flag High), the anthem of the Nazi party. Members of the SA, or "Sturmabteilung", the paramilitary wing of the Nazi party, appeared later in the day to continue looting the institute. Four days later, the Institute's remaining library and archives were publicly hauled out and burned in the streets of the Opernplatz by members of the SA, alongside the students, as the brass band played. A bronze bust of Hirschfeld, taken from the Institute, was placed on top of the bonfire. One estimate says that between 12,000 to 20,000 books and journals were destroyed. This included artistic works, rare medical and anthropological documentation of trans people, and charts concerning cases of intersexuality. The Nazis then seized control of the buildings themselves and used them for their own purposes.

On the 28th of June, 1934 Hitler conducted a purge of gay/trans people in the ranks of the SA wing of the Nazis, murdering them in the Night of the Long Knives. He is believed to have used address lists seized from the Institute.

Hirschfeld never returned to Germany, living out the rest of his days in exile. On his 67th birthday, Magnus Hirschfeld died of a heart attack in his apartment in Nice. The slab covering his tomb is engraved "Per Scientiam ad Justitiam".

When you hear people claim that trans people are a "new" idea or that there is not enough "research" about LGBT people, blame a Nazi. They're the reason why you think that.

Tell our stories.
#PRIDE #TransHistory

In 1978, a woman launched a global microchip revolution, and then disappeared from history.

Lynn Conway was born in Mount Vernon, New York on January 2, 1938. She was a shy and introverted child who did well in math and sciences. However, she was also assigned male at birth and struggled with intense gender dysphoria.

Conway entered MIT in 1955, earning high grades but ultimately leaving in despair after an attempted gender transition failed due to the medical climate at the time. After working as an electronics technician for several years, she went back to school at Columbia University's School of Engineering and Applied Science, earning her B.S. and M.S.E.E. degrees in 1962 and 1963.

The following year, she was recruited by IBM and was soon selected to join the architecture team designing an advanced supercomputer. The project, called ACS, which stood for Advanced Computing Systems, has been described by historians as the world's first superscalar design, a computer architectural paradigm widely exploited in modern high-performance microprocessors.

In 1968, Lynn heard about the pioneering research of Harry Benjamin in healthcare for transgender women. And, realizing that gender affirmation surgery was now possible, Conway sought his help. Suffering from severe depression from gender dysphoria, Conway contacted Benjamin, who agreed to provide counseling and prescribe hormones. Under Benjamin's care, Conway began her medical gender transition. After the success of the ACS project, Lynn had hoped to be able to transition on the job, but IBM fired Conway immediately after she revealed her intention to transition.

So, in 1968, Conway restarted her career in computing, this time entering the field as a woman. She took a job at Computer Applications, Inc, then at Memorex, and then finally at Xerox in 1973. In her words, she was now in "stealth mode," under the not unfounded assumption that, should her past be discovered, she would be fired again.

In 1973, collaborating with Ivan Sutherland and Carver Mead of Caltech, Lynn co-developed a revolutionary new method of microchip design that allowed billions of individual components to be integrated into one chip with relative simplicity. Her design was called VLSI - or Very Large Scale Integration, and the importance of this invention cannot be understated in the modern world. Billions of digital devices worldwide, from iPhones to electronic cars to computerised coffee machines, were all made possible in part by her ideas. As the University of Michigan put it in 2014: "Thank Lynn Conway for your cell phone."

In 1978, she left Xerox and took a position at MIT, teaching a now famous course on VLSI design. While there, she co-authored "Introduction to VLSI Systems", with Carver Mead - a groundbreaking work that soon became a standard textbook in chip design, selling over 70,000 copies, and appearing in nearly 120 university curriculums by 1983. Basically, if you are in IT, and got your degree anywhere in America during the 80's you learned your trade, and owe your livelihood, in part, to a trans woman.

Following up on this, Lynn continued to be on the forefront of new technologies. The problem she was now trying to solve was how to cope with the increasing complexity of chip design. As the number of transistors per chip doubled every two years, keeping up with this required new ways to design and manufacture new microchips. In 1981, she invented dimensionless, scalable design rules that greatly simplified chip design, as well as a new form of internet-based infrastructure for rapid prototyping of new chip designs. This new infrastructure was called the Metal Oxide Semiconductor Implementation Service, or "MOSIS", and was funded in part by DARPA. Only two years into its success, Mead and Conway received Electronics Magazine's annual award of achievement. Since then, MOSIS has fabricated more than 50,000 circuit designs for commercial firms, government agencies, and research and educational institutions around the world.

Leaving MIT for DARPA, she became a key architect of the Defense Department's Strategic Computing Initiative, which was a research program studying high-performance computing, autonomous systems technology, and intelligent weapons technology. Working under Dr. Robert Cooper, Director of DARPA and Assistant Secretary of Defense, Conway led the effort that produced the Strategic Computing Plan published in November 1983.

Conway then joined the University of Michigan in 1985 as professor of electrical engineering and computer science and associate dean of engineering. It was here that, in 1987, Lynn met the man who would become her husband - Charles "Charlie" Rogers, a professional engineer who shared her interest in the outdoors, including whitewater canoeing and motocross racing. They started living together, and soon bought a house with 24 acres of meadow, marsh, and woodland in rural Michigan in 1994.

In 1998, Conway quietly retired from active teaching and research as professor emerita at Michigan, and four years later, on a beautiful bright day in August, Lynn and Charlie were married.

On June 9th of 2024, just 3 days ago, Lynn Conway passed away from a heart condition at her home in Jackson, Michigan, at the age of 86.

Lynn was a brilliant engineer and computer scientist, who never sought fame or recognition for her achievements and global contributions to the modern world. But, slowly, that recognition is coming to pass anyway. In 2009, she received an award from the engineering trade group, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers(IEEE). In 2020, IBM finally apologized for firing her 42 years earlier. And, this past October, just 8 months before she died, Lynn Conway was inducted into the National Inventors’ Hall of Fame as the co-creator of VLSI – some 14 years after Carver Mead received the same honor.

Tell our stories.
#PRIDE #TransHistory

On April 8, 1629, in a small Christian town, a Christian court with a Christian judge, issued a verdict declaring one of their town's residents to be legally both male and female at the same time.

Thomas/ine Hall was born at All Saint's Church in Newcastle Upon Tyne, England, sometime in the early 1600s. Their parents, assigning them the female gender role, named them Thomasine, raised them as a girl, and trained them to perform traditional women's crafts such as needlework. Though assigned female, Thomas/ine sometimes dressed in male clothing in private at home.

But at the age of 12, they were sent off to live with their aunt in London. There, Hall was made to wear women's dresses, grow their hair long, and behave like a lady in so-called "cultured society". They lived there for 10 years in total, and during this time observed the popularity among the aristocracy of crossover fashion choices between the sexes.

In the early 1620s, now a young adult and able to make their own choices, Hall decided to adopt a masculine hairstyle, and changed "into the fashion of a man" in order to follow their brother into military service. After serving in both England and France for a time, Hall returned home to Plymouth where they reverted to a feminine presentation and earned a living making bone lace and needlework.

Around 1627, Thomas/ine began to grow unsatisfied with their life in England. Like many other working-class people of their day, Thomas/ine was interested in the opportunity for a new life in the English colonies of North America. They decided to take their chances in the colonies as an indentured servant. Donning men's clothing once again, they signed a contract as an indentured servant with a ship leaving for Jamestown, using the name Thomas. From there, they relocated to a nearby settlement called Warrosquyoacke. This tiny village of less than 200 people was the home of two tobacco plantations, located where present-day Smithfield, Virginia is.

Thomas/ine went to work for a man named John Tyos on the smaller of the two tobacco plantations. However, they were not particularly strict about presenting consistently as male in this new environment. At first, Hall continued to dress as and perform the work of a man. But at some point, they started to dress as a woman and take on traditional women’s labor again. For his part, John appears to have had no problem with this switch, as he later swore to the community at large that he believed Thomas/ine was a woman. But other members of the community were less accepting of the change.

When asked one day about why they sometimes wore female clothes, Thomas/ine replied cryptically "I goe in womans apparel to get a bitt for my Catt". It's unclear what they meant by this. Various historians have suggested that Hall may have dressed as a woman in order to seduce women, or alternatively in order to have sex with men. Rumors began circulating about their sexual exploits about town.

One such rumor claimed that Thomas/ine had had sex with a maid from a different household, an enslaved woman who went by the name "Great Besse". This particular rumor was, in the minds of these Christian settlers, extremely problematic due to the ambiguity of Hall's gender. If Thomas/ine was a man, this act was the crime of fornication, and they would have to stand trial for it. But if Thomas/ine was a woman, there was no crime.

Three "respectable" Christian women of the community, Alice Long, Dorothy Rodes, and Barbara Hall, took it upon themselves to find out which. The women snuck into Thomas/ine's room in the dead of night, watching them while they were sleeping. This first attempt at spying on Thomas/ine unclothed yielded no clear result. So they did it again and again. They eventually decided amongst themselves that Thomas/ine lacked a "readable set of female genitalia" and was therefore definitely male.

The matter was brought to John Tyos, the plantation owner, and owner of Thomas/ine's contract. The women convinced him to interview Thomas/ine partly because of the rumors, and also because another member of the community, a man named John Atkins, had proposed buying out Thomas/ine's contract, and their gender would determine both the kind of work they could perform and the price of their contract. During this interview, Hall confessed that they had “a piece of flesh growing at the belly as big as the top of my little finger,” but that they “had not the use of the man’s parts". Male incompetence was considered sufficient to determine female sex during the early modern colonial period. Therefore, Tyos thought Thomas/ine’s report was reasonable. He found that they were a woman, and ordered them to wear women’s clothing. This finding meant they could not be prosecuted for debauching Besse.

John Atkins purchased Thomas/ine's labor contract, and they took up a position in his home as a woman laborer. However, the three women who spied on Thomas/ine were not happy with this decision. They conducted a physical examination of Thomas/ine while they slept, and when this too yielded uncertain results, demanded that Atkins conduct a more thorough physical exam. During this examination, Thomas/ine told Atkins they had “a piece of a hole". John Atkins and the three women searched Thomas/ine for evidence of a vagina. When they could not find it, they went back to Tyos, who reversed his decision and declared Thomas/ine was a man and must therefore wear men’s clothing.

At this point, the entire community was aware of Thomas/ine’s situation. Two more men stopped Hall on a public road. The men stripped Thomas/ine of their clothing, pulled out their genitalia, and decided that Hall was “a perfect man.” As far as the community was concerned, Thomas/ine’s gender was finally settled. They decided to punish Thomas/ine for pretending to be a woman.

Thomas/ine appeared before the Quarter Court of Virginia in 1629. They shared their life story, explaining to the court that they had lived as both a man and as a woman. There was no understanding of gender fluidity or intersex bodies in the colonial era, but something about Thomas/ine’s testimony convinced the court that they were being genuine. The governor decided on an extraordinary verdict. Thomas/ine was declared to be both a man and a woman. They would be required to wear the clothing of both genders: the breeches and shirt of a man, with the cap and apron of a woman. This was so “all the Inhabitants there may take notice” of Thomas/ine’s unusual status.

However, this did not clear up any questions about whether Thomas/ine had committed a crime, nor about what kind of work they might be permitted to do. This verdict merely meant that Thomas/ine would be forever marked as different in their chosen community.

And it's here that Thomas/ine's story comes to a rather dissatisfying end. They completely disappear from the official records, and we have no information about what they did after the verdict, where they went, how they lived their life, or how they died. It is most likely that they moved to another community in the colonies, where they took on a new name and lived a quiet, uneventful life as either a man or a woman. I like to think Thomas/ine would enjoy that ambiguity.

Tell our stories.
#PRIDE #TransHistory

It's the 18th of November, 1944, and the world is at war. Second Lieutenant Roberta Cowell of the British Royal Airforce has been assigned to No. 4 Squadron, doing aerial photo-recon of Nazi forces on the outskirts of Antwerp, Belgium.

On this particular day, she is flying a Typhoon fighter-bomber that has been retrofitted with camera equipment on a low-level sortie near Bocholt, Germany. Southeast of Kessel, she spots enemy ground forces and attacks. It's a mistake. The Nazis respond with a blanket of anti-aircraft fire. Her engine is shredded, and both her wings knocked full of holes so wide she can hear the wind whistling through them. The plane starts entering an uncontrolled decent.

Roberta Elizabeth Marshall Cowell was born on April 8th, 1918 in Croydon, London, into a military family. Her father, Major-General Ernest Marshall Cowell was a surgeon who served in France during the first great war, and later, would serve again in the second and earn a knighthood for his wartime efforts. Ernest also had a lifelong love affair with fast, loud, expensive cars.

That's probably where I got it from, Roberta thought madly to herself as her plane's propellor spun slowly to a stop. She considered her options. A bail-out was out of the question. She was flying too low for the chute to open. But a landing might be just possible, if she could just find an open stretch of land within gliding distance. She popped the canopy of her airplane to increase visibility, and scanned the lightly forested German countryside beneath her.

Roberta's childhood was relatively normal, all things considered. She attended Whitgift Public School like all the other little Croydon boys whose fathers could afford it. She was a chubby child, and wore large glasses, and so earned a few unflattering knicknames like "Circumference" and "Bottom". But she enjoyed school nonetheless. She joined the school's Motor Club, which allowed her to indulge in her dream of driving very fast, very expensive things with very large engines. On one trip with the Motor Club in Germany, she was caught photographing a group of Nazis performing drills. She was threatened with arrest but was released on the promise that she would hand over the film to be destroyed. However, she was able to substitute stock footage instead, and smuggled the offending film back to England.

Roberta spotted a clearing and wrestled with the controls to aim for it. She wondered briefly if any Nazi patrols had seen her plane go down and were tracking her. If so, there was nothing she could do about it now. This airplane was going down one way or the other. She concentrated on landing it as safely and quickly as possible. Quickly wasn't a problem. It was the safely part that worried her. The horizon rose. The wheels touched down. The plane rolled to a stop. Roberta took a wild look around her, absolutely astounded to be in one piece. Breathlessly, she radioed back to her partner, confirming that she was unhurt. Hopping out of the cockpit, she saw the first Nazi enter the clearing. He was aiming his rifle right at her. She raised her hands in surrender.

At the age of 16, Roberta left Whitgift Public School to join Aircraft Limited, as an apprentice aircraft engineer. This job didn't last long though, and she soon quit and enlisted in the RAF. She became an acting pilot officer on probation in August of 1936, but was soon discharged because of airsickness. Later that year, she went back to school, this time studying engineering at University College London. Also in that year, she began motor-racing, winning event after event in her class at the Lands End Speed Trial in Riley. It would seem her dreams were finally coming true. By 1939, she owned three cars and had competed in the 1939 Grand Prix at Antwerp.

As a POW of the Nazi regime, Roberta knew that her chances of rescue were slim, and getting even slimmer the deeper into Germany she was taken. If she was going to attempt an escape, it had to be now, while she was still close enough to the front line. Perhaps Lt. Draper was even mounting a search and rescue operation right now. She waited for her moment, and made a break for it, running for her life. But she was quickly recaptured by Nazi troops. She tried twice more in the following days, but gave up as she was dragged further and further into the heart of Nazi Germany.

When war broke out the Nazis, England needed anyone who could theoretically fly to get behind a cockpit. So, despite her airsickness, Cowell was posted to the RAF on the 24th of January, 1942 with the rank of pilot officer (temporary). She completed RAF flying training at RAF Ansty. Roberta served a tour with a front-line Spitfire squadron, then a brief stint as an instructor, but by June of 1944 she was assigned to the task of aerial reconnaissance, flying an unarmed, camera-equipped version of the Supermarine Spitfire.

Roberta had lots of time to think about the events which led her here, as she spent several weeks in solitary confinement at an interrogation centre for captured Allied aircrew, before being moved to Stalag Luft I, a prisoner of war camp in northern Germany. Far, far away from the front lines. Far from any hope of rescue. Months passed. She passed the time by teaching classes in automotive engineering to her fellow inmates, of whom there were about 9,000. Towards the end of the war, food began running short. Cowell dropped about 50 pounds from her already lightweight frame as starvation rations took their toll. Roberta would later describe in her autobiography that she was forced to kill and eat some of the camp cats and eat the meat raw just to survive.

On the 30th of April, 1945, allied Soviet forces liberated Roberta's camp, and two weeks after that, Roberta landed once more in London, England, courtesy of the United States Army Air Forces.

After demobilization, Cowell returned to civilian life, founding a motor-racing team and competing in events all over Europe. However, Roberta remembers this time as one of great stress and clinical depression. Racing very fast, very expensive, very loud cars did not hold the same joy it once had for her. She also experienced traumatic flashbacks while watching a film called "My Own Executioner", in which the hero is shot-down by anti-aircraft fire while flying a Spitfire.

She sought out a leading Freudian psychiatrist, but was unsatisfied with the help he offered. But sessions with a second psychiatrist revealed, in her own words, that her "unconscious mind was predominantly female" and that "the feminine side of my nature, which all my life I had known of and severely repressed, was very much more fundamental and deep-rooted than I had supposed."

By 1950, Cowell was taking large doses of estrogen, but was still presenting as masculine. She convinced a close friend, physician, and trans man himself, to perform an ingual orchiectomy on her. This was done in secrecy, as UK law at the time banned the procedure. Cowell then presented herself to a private Harley Street gynaecologist and was able to obtain from him a document stating she was intersex. This allowed her to have a new birth certificate issued, with her recorded sex changed to female. This new birth certificate in hand, Roberta had a vaginoplasty performed on the 15th of May, 1951. The operation was carried out by Sir Harold Gillies, widely considered the father of plastic surgery. At that time, vaginoplasty was a completely novel procedure, which Gillies developed using his experience of reconstructing the genitals of soldiers who had endured injuries from explosive blasts. The name on Roberta's birth certificate was changed on May 17th of that year.

After this, Roberta returned to motor-racing and even attracted some publicity for winning the 1957 Shelsley Walsh Speed Hill Climb. However, as a woman, Roberta found it increasingly difficult to earn gainful employment. None of the jobs she was qualified for wanted to hire a woman. And none of the jobs which were hiring women were anywhere near her areas of expertise. In later years, she largely dropped out of the public eye as money troubles increased. However she was still an active figure in British motor racing all the way up through the 1970s.

Sometime during the 90s, Roberta's drinking finances forced her to move into government housing, though she continued to own and drive very fast, very powerful cars. She died on October 11th, 2011. Her body was not discovered until weeks later by a cleaning lady. Her funeral was attended by only six people and (on her instructions) went unpublicised. Her death was not even publicly reported until two years later, when a profile of her was printed in The Independent in October 2013. Her official obituary was not published until June 5th, 2020, in the New York Times, almost a decade after her death.

Tell our stories.
#PRIDE #TransHistory

At sunrise May 16, in the year 218AD, a woman named Elagabalus was declared Emperor of the Roman Empire by the commander of the Roman Third Legion. She would reign for only four years.

Somewhat understandably, this declaration was very concerning to the current emperor, a man named Macrinus. Macrinus had risen to power by assassinating his predecessor, a man named Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, but better known by his nickname Caracalla. So, to strengthen her claim to the throne, Elagabalus took the name Marcus Aurelius Antoninus and claimed to be the illegitimate son of the assassinated emperor. This was untrue - Elegabalus's grandmother was merely cousin to emperor Caracalla. But Caracalla was so beloved by certain factions that merely the claim was enough.

What followed can only be categorized as chaos. Another praetorian prefect declared war on the Third Legion, but his soldiers killed their officers and joined Elagabalus' forces instead. Emperor Macrinus then tried to convince the Roman Senate to declare Elegabalus to be a "false Anoninus". When they complied and declared war on Elegabalus, her armies, and her family, Elegabalus responded by sending a messenger to deliver the severed head of his defeated prefect Julianus to him at a banquet. After this, the Second Legion shifted its loyalties to Elegabalus, forcing Macrinus to retreat to Antioch, fearing for his life.

On June 8th, 218AD, just one month after declaring herself emperor, Elegabalus' legionnaires defeated Macrinus and his Praetorian Guard at The Battle of Antioch. Macrinus attempted to flee but was captured and executed.

Thus began the short, strange reign of Emperor Elegabalus. That month, Elagabalus wrote to the Senate, assuming the imperial titles without waiting for senatorial approval. Elegabalus extended amnesty to the Senate which had declared war on her, and officially recognized its laws and authority. The Senate responded by acknowledging Elegabalus as Emperor of Rome, and by accepting her claim to be the son of Caracalla.

The memory of Macrinus was officially expunged from the record, showing Elegabalus as directly succeeding Caracalla, and both Caracalla himself and Elegabalus' grandmother were deified by the Roman Senate. The very next month, Elegabalus was named both "Pater Patriae" (an political honorific roughly translating to "Father of the Fatherland") by the Roman Senate, and also inducted into the Roman priesthood as "Pontifex Maximus" (the highest religious office in Rome, roughly akin to "Pope").

Elegabalus returned to Rome from Antioch, and using the religious authority granted to her, began making significant changes to the official Roman pantheon. She instated her own god, Elegabal, as prime deity above Jupiter, and began holding religious ceremonies and chariot parades celebrating this new sun god. A lavish temple, called the Elegabalium, was built on the eastern face of the Palatine Hill to house Elegabal, who was represented there by a black conical meteorite. Sometimes she took this meteorite out of the Elegabalium on chariot parades through the streets of Rome so that all the citizens could see the new god and worship.

Around this time, Elegabalus was viewing a chariot race when an enslaved man named Hierocles fell in front of her. She was so captivated by his beauty that she granted him his freedom and took him as her lover and husband. She reportedly even wanted to declare him Caesar, but her grandmother was deeply opposed to it.

Elegabalus began wearing wigs and dresses, and stylized herself as the Lady Elagabalus. She is credited in several sources as having declared "[I am] delighted to be called the mistress, the wife, the Queen of Hierocles." She reportedly even offered vast sums of money for any physician who could provide her with a vagina by means of incision. Though some historians treat these tales with caution, saying that accounts of Elagabalus' life can tend to be antagonistic and untrustworthy, this claim has caused many to credit Elegabalus as being the first trans woman in recorded history to actively seek sex reassignment surgery.

Later that year, another athlete, a man named Zoticus, also caught Elegabalus' eye. In addition to being known for his beautiful body, Zoticus was also famed for having large sexual organs. When the emperor's envoys, sent around for this purpose, learned of this fame, they had him accompanied to Rome with a gigantic escort.

At the capital, he was adorned with garlands and declared "cubicularius", a title meaning "attendant to the emperor's bedroom". Elagabalus opened the doors of the palace dancing and, when Zoticus greeted her calling her "Lord Emperor", Elagabalus replied: "Call me not Lord, for I am a Lady."

The accounts on the outcome of this evening vary. In one account, the two retired to the baths together, and Elegabalus prepared for an evening with Zoticus as his lover. However, Hierocles, fearing that Zoticus might supplant him in the favor of the emperor, drugged his drink. Zoticus, unable to satisfy his lover, was stripped of his titles, and banished from Italy. In the other account, no such attempt occurred, and Elagabalus publicly married Zoticus as his bride, even having a female bride's maid which would be traditional in a Roman marriage, and then the two consummated their union. It is this second account that is thought to be accurate.

Popular support for Elagabalus had begun to wane, primarily among Rome's elite. Some were uncomfortable with her perceptibly foreign conduct. Others were upset by her religious proclamations. Many were outraged that she had lifted the ban on women in the Senate. Sensing this waning of public favor Elagabalus' grandmother decided that she and her mother both needed to be replaced. She arranged to to have the son of another of her daughters, a fifteen year old boy named Severus Alexander, declared Elegabalus' successer and granted the title Caesar. Alexander was elevated to Caesar in either June or July of 221AD, and both he and Elagabalus were each designated consul designitus (a political title involving representation in the Senate) for the following year.

Alexander shared the consulship with Elagabalus until 222AD, but she began to suspect that the Praetorian Guard preferred his cousin to herself, and became dissatisfied with the arrangement. After attempting and failing to convince the Senate to strip Alexander of the title, Elagabalus spread a rumor among the Praetorian Guard that Alexander was near death, to see how they would react. A riot ensued, and the Guard insisted on seeing both Elagabalus and Alexander in the Praetorian Camp.

The emperor complied. On their arrival the soldiers started cheering Alexander while ignoring Elagabalus, who ordered the summary arrest and execution of anyone who had taken part in this display of insubordination. In response, members of the Praetorian Guard attacked Elagabalus and killed her.

Following her assassination, many associates of Elagabalus were also executed, including her mother and her lover Hierocles. Her religious edicts were reversed. Women were again banned from attending the Senate. Coins bearing her likeness were seized and melted down. Many of her images, including a life-size statue of herself in Naples as Hercules were re-carved with the face of the new emperor, Severus Alexander. She was systematically erased from public memory. It was as if she had never existed.

Tell our stories.
#PRIDE #TransHistory

In 1945, a woman named Lucy Hicks Anderson was arrested for the crime of marrying her husband, Reuben Anderson, a soldier in the US Army.

Lucy Lawson seemingly always knew exactly who she was. In 1886, a beautiful black baby was born to Bill and Nancy Lawson of Waddy, KY. While this child was identified as male, she insisted that she was a girl. She chose the name Lucy and informed her parents that she would be wearing dresses to school.

At this point in history, the term 'transgender' had not yet been coined, and public knowledge about trans people was sadly lacking. Confounded, her mother and father took her to see the local doctor who advised them to raise her as they would any other little girl. Bill and Nancy did just that. And by all accounts, Lucy's childhood and school years were uneventful and happy.

At age 15, Lucy left home, taking domestic work to support herself, then moved west, first to Texas then to New Mexico where she married her first husband, a man named Clarence Hicks, in Silver City, NM. The couple settled in Oxnard, CA, a wealthy community about an hour up the coast from Los Angeles. There, Lucy's culinary skills opened doors for her, and she began to cater elaborate parties for Oxnard's rich and elite. Her rolls and fruitcakes reportedly won many local contests and awards. Lucy worked diligently and tirelessly, and saved nearly every penny she earned from her employment as a domestic worker, a nanny, and a cook. And in 1920, at the age of 34, Lucy managed to save enough to purchase business property — a local brothel.

Lucy's brothel operated between 1920 and 1933, a period in American history known as Prohibition. During this time, selling alcohol was illegal. But as a brothel madam, Lucy had already skipped merrily over the lines of propriety, so she served her customers alcohol anyway.

In 1929, Lucy divorced Clarence Hicks. Not much is known about her marriage or divorce to Clarence, so we can infer that the separation was mutual and uncontested by either party. Lucy kept her business, and kept bootlegging alcohol.

She was busted a few times, but her numerous social connections with wealthy socialites allowed her to avoid any aggressive prosecution. Rumor has it that one wealthy banker even posted her bail so that she could cater his party that evening.

In 1944, Lucy fell in love a second time. At 58 years old, she met and married the love of her life, Reuben Anderson. Reuben was a soldier stationed in Long Island, NY. But their happiness was not to last.

Just one year after their marriage, a sailor claimed he had caught a venereal disease from one of the women at Lucy's brothel. At that time, the law required all sex workers to undergo a medical examination, and the Ventura County examiner insisted on including Lucy. It was at this time that her trans identity was revealed, and subsequently made public. He chose to put her on trial for perjury, arguing that she lied on her marriage licence, impersonated a woman, and stole VA benefits to which military spouses were entitled. After the story ran in a small Pacific coast newspaper, Time Magazine ran an article on Lucy, exposing her as a trans woman to the entire nation.

During her trial, Lucy stated in her defense, "I defy any doctor in the world to prove that I am not a woman. I have lived, dressed, acted just what I am, a woman". However, the court convicted both her and Reuben of perjury, and they were both sentenced to incarceration in a male prison. Lucy in particular was court ordered not to wear women's clothes.

Reuben and Lucy's relationship survived these indignities, somehow. After serving ten long years in a male penitentiary, Lucy and her beloved Reuben retired to Los Angeles, where they quietly lived out the remainder of their lives together. At age 68, Lucy Hicks Anderson died and was mourned by all who knew her.

Lucy Hicks Anderson was not an activist. She was not even known as a trans woman for the vast majority of her life. She simply wanted to live her life, love her loves, and pursue the projects and interests that made her happy. Lucy wanted only one thing out of life, and that was to be the woman she knew herself to be. And it turns out she was willing to fight for that.

Tell our stories.
#PRIDE #TransHistory

On the 20th of May, 1810, a member of the French nobility died. And nobody, including the attending physician who examined the body, knew what to write on their death certificate.

The Chevalier d'Eon had always had a naturally androgenous appearance, a fact which they capitalized on frequently throughout their life. The child of a minor French nobleman, d'Eon enjoyed the benefits of an education, excelling in school, and earning a law degree. After school, they took work as a political writer for a time, and then became secretary to a series of Parisian administrators, working in areas of finance as well as in history and literature.

But in 1756, they joined a secret network of spies known only to King Louis XV, and working without the official knowledge or sanction of the French government. d'Eon's mission was to infiltrate the court of Empress Elizabeth of Russia, and there, conspire with members of a pro-French faction of the Russian government against the Habsburg monarchy of Austria. At the time, Russian border crossings were restricted only to women and children. So, according to d'Eon's memoirs, they were forced to pass convincingly as a woman or risk execution. Thus disguised as "the Lady Beaumont", they served as maid of honor to the Empress.

Years later, d'Eon returned to France, awarded an enormous sum of money for their service to the King, and became Captain of Dragoons - a military title involving mounted cavalry. Later, they served in the Seven Years' War against England. When the war ended, d'Eon themself drafted the peace treaty, and was awarded another handsome sum of money for their efforts, receiving the title "Chevalier" - a French title of nobility roughly translating to "Knight".

In 1763, a series of political machinations saw d'Eon embroiled in a scandal. Having lived in London now for years, d'Eon published a series of letters detailing some (though not all) of their secret dealings as a spy. This breach of diplomatic discretion was scandalous in the extreme, but secured them the sympathy of the English public. In these letters, d'Eon claimed that the new ambassador to England, a man named Guerchy, had tried to poison them at a dinner. Guerchy sued for libel, and d'Eon strangely offered no defense at the trial. They were thus declared an outlaw and went into hiding. Eventually, Louis XV granted d'Éon a pension (possibly a pay-off for d'Éon's silence) and a 12,000-livre annuity, but refused a request to pay off the rest of their debts. d'Eon continued to work as a spy for Louis XV, but lived in political exile in London.

And here is where our story truly begins to get strange.

It was around this time that rumors began circulating in London that d'Eon was actually a woman, despite the fact that they routinely wore their military dragoons uniform, and claimed to be, and have always been a man. A betting pool over their true gender was started on the London Stock Exchange. d'Eon was invited to participate but declined, stating that an examination would be dishonoring whatever the result. After a year without any further updates, the wager was abandoned and the monies returned.

Then, in 1774, King Louis XV died, and d'Eon, sensing an opportunity to return to their homeland, attempted to negotiate an end to their exile. The resulting twenty page treaty permitted d'Eon to return to France, but demanded that they turn over any documents and correspondence from their time as a spy under Louis XV. Additionally, a clause in the treaty demanded that they present themselves as female during the voyage.

So the Chevalier d'Eon, now stylizing themself as the Chevalière d'Eon (a feminized form of the title given to them by Louis XV at the end of the war), and wearing their dragoon uniform, began making plans to return to France. However, now claiming to have always been a woman, they demanded recognition by the French government as such. They claimed that their father had to raise them as a boy, because his father could only inherit from his in-laws if he had a son. King Louis XVI complied with this demand, but required in turn that d'Eon no longer wear the military uniform and instead dress as a woman. Included with the offer was a substantial sum of money for a complete women's wardrobe. Whether it was because d'Eon really was assigned female at birth, as they claimed, or whether it was merely the money and station offered by the new King, d'Eon agreed. So, d'Eon returned to France a woman, and as punishment, was summarily banished to Tonnerre.

For the rest of their life, d'Eon would maintain this presentation, even offering to join with the Americans in the War of Independence, leading a battalion of female fighters against England, though their banishment ultimately prevented it. During this time there are accounts of the Chevalière d'Eon fencing, fighting, and participating in duels with other French nobility, always presenting as the woman they claimed to always have been. After the French Revolution, the king's pension vanished, and d'Eon was forced to sell much of their possessions to survive - though they did not give up their female attire. In 1809 at the age of 80, d'Eon suffered a fall and became paralyzed and bedridden. They died in poverty in 1810 at the age of 81.

But their story doesn't quite end there.

The surgeon who examined d'Éon's body after their death attested in their post-mortem certificate that d'Eon had "male organs in every respect perfectly formed", while at the same time displaying feminine characteristics such as "unusual roundness in the formation of limbs", as well as "breasts remarkably full". Though buried in an unmarked pauper's grave, there exists to this day a memorial in London listing the Chevalier d'Eon as one of the important graves lost to time.

Even by modern standards, the Chevalier/Chevalière d'Eon's gender identity is a bit of an enigma. Some have suggested they may have been intersex. Some choose to interpret their story as transgender or gender fluidity. Some have even coined a term - "eonism" - to describe similar cases of gender nonconformity.

Tell our stories.
#PRIDE #TransHistory

In July of 1862, at age 18, Albert D.J. Cashier, wearing male clothes, and presenting as a man, enlisted in the Army, answering President Lincoln's call for soldiers. Even before this, he had already adopted his male name and presentation for many years prior, working at a shoe factory and on a farm as a hired hand.

Albert was then trained to be an infantryman of the 95th regiment at Camp Fuller and assigned to Company G, where he fought to liberate the Confederate strongholds of Columbus, KY, and Jackson, TN. His regiment was then ordered to become part of the Army of the Tennessee under Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. At one point, he was actually captured by the Confederate army, but managed a daring escape, rejoined his regiment, and then laid siege to Vicksburg against the very army that had captured him just days prior. The siege lasted over a month, and was the last remaining Confederate stronghold along the Mississippi River. The importance of this battle cannot be understated. Capturing Vicksburg completed the second phase of Lincoln's "Northern Strategy", called the Anaconda Plan. Lincoln himself called Vicksburg "the key to the war". Under Grant, Albert Cashier fought in at least 40 battles, including Vicksburg and the Battle of Spring Hill.

After the war, Albert returned to civilian life and continued to live and work as a man until his declining mental health finally placed him in a mental institution where his birth sex was discovered and he was stripped of his military pension and forced to wear a dress. Fortunately, Albert was able to prove he was the same person who fought in the war, and his pension was reinstated. He is buried with full military honors in his uniform.

Tell our stories.
#PRIDE #TransHistory