Yesterday I talked about a Jewish doctor who aided people who are trans at the turn of the last century and did so up until the point he was forced to flee Germany during the Nazi takeover. For those who missed it there will be a link to the previous diary at the bottom of this one. Today I want to talk about a transwoman who was an advocate for trans rights, womens rights, and rape survivors rights during the 1800s.
Her name was Frances Thompson.
She was a transwoman that according to some reports from doctors who examined her later in life was likely born with an intersexed condition.
She was a strong and proud black freedwoman.
She was a rape survivor and anti-rape activist.
And thanks to the reconstruction south, she was wrongfully arrested because of all of those things.
I am telling you this before I get into her story so you know where she came from, and have an understanding of some of what happened to her. If anyone is triggered by talk of rape or wrongful imprisonment, please steady yourself before reading this story if you choose to continue. I know I had to before I learned of her story, and had to again while writing this.
While not everything is known about her what is known is that she was born in Alabama in 1840, as a slave. Not much is known about her life as a slave, but it is more than likely it was horrific, especially since she had to use crutches from when she was young. Most of her story that we know starts at the age of 26, in Tennessee. To be precise in Memphis, Tennessee. If you know anything about the reconstruction south after the Civil War, you should have an idea where this is going.
The Memphis Riots of 1866.
Her story in the riots starts during the height of them and with one of the worst things that can happen. She and her roommate Lucy Smith were staying indoors during the riots, trying not to get hurt. It didn’t help them, several of the rioting men, all of them white and many of them police, broke into their home. These men forced them to make them food all the while questioning them if they had connections to Union soldiers. The women tried to remain steadfast when the men demanded women to sleep with after they had been fed. Both of them refused. So these men that broke into their home beat them, raped them, and robbed them.
Frances and Lucy didn’t stand for this. The two of them, alongside three other women that were raped during the riots took their case to a congressional committee, making Frances the first transwoman to stand before them as a witness. She stood strong in front of the government, doing her best to advocate for herself and the other women raped.
That should be where her story remained, a woman who stood strong against her attackers.
The world was not that kind.
Ten years after she was raped in her own home, she was arrested for the crime of being a transwoman. The same former confederates that rioted in Memphis, the same ones who raped her, called that her claims of rape be stricken from the record calling her a “man in a dress”. She was forced to be examined by multiple doctors just to prove that she “was a man.” She was sent to prison for the crime of being herself. And in prison she was forced to present as male despite being a woman, assaulted, humiliated, and forced to work on a chain gaing. They also used this to discredit all the advocacy she had done.
I remind you, she had to walk with crutches.
She had been living as a woman for over 27 years at that point and several of the doctors who examined her claimed that she likely had an intersexed condition. She was in prison less than a year, but the treatment she faced in that prison led to her developing dysentery. She died only a few months after being released.
Her story stuck with me from the moment I first heard it. For I am also a transwoman born with an intersexed condition who spent some time in my life in Tennessee, was raped, and had to walk with a cane since high school. Unlike her though I am mixed, a mix of the people of the longhouse, a bit of almost everything in Europe, and a minuscule amount of Asian. I may not understand fully what she went through but I understand a little.
This proud, black transwoman should be more known.
Her struggles known.
The unfair end that she faced known.
The bigotry of the people who did that to her known.
And I hope this diary gets more people to go out and research about the struggles of transgendered individuals both men and women pre-1900.
Transgender Awareness Week Day 1 - Dr. Magnus Hirschfield