Guest post: That quasi-religion wasn’t even born yet

Originally a comment by Artymorty on That allegation was false.

Back in 1930s Germany, the concept of what would now be considered “transgender” was barely embryonic. People weren’t querying each others’ inner souls for gender markers; rather, there were strict sex-based rules around sexual behaviour and dress/appearance, and some people contravened them.

So the simple answer is, no, the Nazis didn’t round up “trans people” and send them to the death camps for being trans because that quasi-religion wasn’t even born yet.

Though it was incubating, and prototypical elements were emerging. There had even been, for a brief period, official “transvestite passes” (Transvestitenscheine) that exempted some individuals from public sex-based dress laws. So maybe there’s some nuance we can suss out regarding the Nazis’ attitues towards what we could charitably call proto-transgender. Really, the only proxy we can use is cross-dressing, because that’s really the only material component that overlaps between today’s spiritual “transgender” identitarianism and German Wiemar- and Nazi-era proto-trans stereotype-defying and gender-bending. Cross-dressing is a behaviour — a material act — whereas “transgender” is an identity. So they’re not exactly the same thing, but it’s about as close as possible for our pupose.

So did the Nazis explicitly single out cross-dressers to be sent to the death camps?

Again, the answer is: no, they didn’t.

Whether or not you were a cross-dresser was not a criterion in the Nazi camp categorization system. It was whether or not you were a male homosexual (or were accused of having any sexual relation with another man), whether or not you were a convicted criminal, or whether or not they considered you “asocial” — an amorphous, class-loaded catch-all category, basically miscellaneous low-lifes: prostitutes, vagrants, “gypsies”, addicts, the severely deformed or disabled…

The other categories — political opponents, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and of course, the Jews — aren’t particularly relevant to this specific query.

So, many cross-dressers, male and female, did end up in the death camps, but at least officially, the reasons were that they were gay men, that they had criminal convictions, or that they were deemed “asocial” low-lifes. (Interestingly, lesbian sex acts weren’t considered criminal, but butch lesbians were classified as asocials and sent to the camps anyway.)

But perhaps equally as many cross-dressers didn’t go to the camps. If you were an otherwise upstanding straight man who could keep your cross-dressing habit contained enough to pass it off as a bit of costume fun if the Nazis interrogated you about it, you were probably fine. And we know there was plenty of cross-dressing going on among the rank-and-file Nazis. (Wherever you find lots of men in uniforms, you find plenty of cross-dressers. They go hand-in-hand for reasons we still don’t quite understand.)

And we also know that many of today’s “transgender women” map onto that latter category: straight guys with kinks, often middle-class or higher, surprisingly frequently in uniformed jobs. By and large, the Caitlyn Jenners and Rachel Levines of the day would have been fine, because they would have simply chosen to curb their public cross-dressing, limiting use of their feminine wardrobes to the home, and perhaps to outings at private soirées and nightclub parties.

At night, the picture gets a bit messy, because 1930s Germany’s — especially Berlin’s — nightlife was a wild, intermingling mash-up: gays & straights of high and low class, kinky and vanilla, gender-bending and not, often all rubbing shoulders in the same clubs. (Berlin’s nightlife is actually still pretty much like that. Ask a Berliner where to find a gay nightclub and you might get a reply along the lines of, all nightclubs in Berlin are gay nightclubs!)

But when the Nazis took power and began raiding the clubs, the wealthy and powerful caught in attendance, cross-dressing or not, would be set free.

So, some people who would today be considered “transgender” were persecuted and ended up murdered in the camps, and other people who would today be considered “transgender” weren’t at risk under the Nazis at all.

And that says a lot about today’s “transgender” population: it’s so heterogeneous, filled with just as many privileged, comfortable people as vulnerable, marginalized ones, that it’s kind of a meaningless category, just as “misellaneous” as the Nazis’ own category of “asocial”.