Translations:History of nonbinary gender/91/en

  • A 1978 issue of Philadelphia Gay News contains an interview with someone who started a transfeminine transition, lived as a woman for a year and a a half, then ceased taking feminizing hormones. The person, going by the name D.J. Beck at the time, states in the interview that "[Our culture feels] that one must be male or one must be female. Our society demands that you cannot be both, you cannot be in between, you cannot be flexible." and "As much as I felt uncomfortable as a male, I felt unnatural as a female." The interview concludes with Beck saying, "I learned that I'm something that we haven't put a label on yet. I'm something that I think a lot of men and women will someday be able to accept and admit they are: people of a personal psyche that doesn't have to be male or female. [...] The time is coming when we will quit thinking in terms of he or she, and live in the shades of gray." [1] If Beck was alive today, they may have identified under the nonbinary/genderqueer umbrella.
  1. Cwiek, Tim (October 15, 1978). "Turning back from a one-way journey". Philadelphia Gay News: 7, 10, 16.