The Transnational History of the Israeli Transgender Community 1953-2021

Professor Iris Rachamimov teaches modern history of Central and Eastern Europe at the Department of History with a special emphasis on the Habsburg Monarchy, World War I, LGBT History and Gender. She received her Ph.D. in 2000 from Columbia University, where she studied under the guidance of István Deák. Her book POWs and the Great War: Captivity on the Eastern Front (2002) was awarded the Fraenkel Prize for Contemporary History for a first major work. Her article "The Disruptive Comforts of Drag" was published in the April 2006 issue of the American Historical Review. She has written the chapter of military captivity in the latest edition of the Cambridge History of War, (2012) and her work appeared so far in six languages. She is currently editing a book with Rotem Kowner on mass internments during the First World War (World War I and its Internments: Local, National and Global Perspectives) and is writing a history of the Israeli trans community.

This talk will look at seven decades of transgender activism in Israel: from Rina Nathan’s public campaign in the 1950s to permit gender confirmation surgeries in the country to present struggles and organizational work. The main focus of this talk is the generation of “founding mothers” of the transgender community who were active between the 1960s and 1980s and look at their quest to obtain knowledge, medical technology and paperwork necessary for their gender journeys. Decades before the creation of the internet, Israeli trans pioneers crossed domestic and international boundaries (both social and spatial) and created a network, which later generations of transgender women and men would depend on.

This webinar is part of an open webinar series, hosted by CISC. To discover more please visit the Centre for Intimate and Sexual Citizenship and follow the Centre on Twitter.