”Finns det någon annan som känner som jag?” : En känslohistorisk undersökning om relationen mellan transerfarenheter, identiteter och organisationer, 1967–1996

Sammanfattning

Writing within the subfield of history of emotions, I aim to understand trans experiences in the late 20th century. I center the lived experiences of gender transgression, as expressed in the internal magazines of two early organizations by and for transpeople in Sweden: Feminform from Phi Pi Epislon Sorority Northern Europe (FPE–NE) and Benjamin-Bladet from Föreningen Benjamin. I find that FPE–NE made sense of their experiences by constructing ways of adjusting the dominant heterosexual norm to include a joyful, private trans experience. Föreningen Benjamin, on the other hand, considered trans an illness and sought ways to cure it and thereby become “normal”, finding almost exclusively tragedy in the experience. Comparing over time, I find that trans experiences were easier to legitimize in the 1960s and 1970s, in light of a more constructivist conception of gender, in comparison to the 1980s and 1990s.