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Trans Guy Archive Origins Land Acknowledgement: Though the Trans Guy Archive is almost fully digital, we operate and gather in New York City within Lenapehoking, the ancestral land of the Lenape people. As we recognize the Lenape people, the Trans Guy Archive stands firm in our commitment to dismantling the historical and present erasure of Indigenous peoples around the world, as well as the effects of settler colonialism. Want to learn more about speaking the language of the Lenape? Trans Guy Archive began officially in May 2025. Before that, it was the pipedream of a sleep-deprived and overly-caffeinated grad student. Transmasculine history and culture is underrepresented, both in popular knowledge and within the LGBTQ+ community itself. It is our strong belief that the documents, biographies, photographs, and other relevant items must be preserved for the benefit of future generations. The Trans Guy Archive was created under the mission that knowledge should be easily accessible AND free/low in cost. By the end of 2025, the Trans Guy Archive has been able to welcome hundreds of eager learners to our website. We have also collaborated with local organizations such as the Trans Visibility Social Club of NYC to bring trans* folk together in a free or low cost third space. Thanks to the advent of social media, we have also been able to disperse a love of history to thousands of people! We will continue to add new artifacts to our digital stacks -- as well as slowly building up our physical archive for a future brick-and-mortar archival space! In the fight for trans* justice and liberation, trans men/mascs have been largely ignored, both in society at large and within the LGBTQ+ community. Trans history largely skews in favor of trans women/femmes -- for better or for worse -- leaving many along the masculine spectrum feeling lost and alienated, even in their own community. This archive aims to serve as an informational and social space for all to learn about the beauty, vitality, and strength of trans men/masculine figures throughout the centuries. This is for all transsexual and transgender men, demiboys, butches, those who are "kinda guys", lesboys, transmascs, multigender, and anyone who falls along the masculine spectrum. Trans guys have always been here, and we're not going anywhere. As historians, it's important to try and not retroactively apply modern-day labels to historical figures. Terms like "transgender " or even "transsexual " are remarkably new phrases in the vast scheme of history, and people have used a wide variety of phrases to try and define their existence. For people who lived before the coining of these terms, this archive uses "trans" as a verb, rather than a noun/adjective. Regardless of how an individual may have identified, they are still trans-ing (transitioning) their gender to a more masculine state. The identities explored on this archive will largely not fit neatly into modern-day expectations of identity and gender. Everyone is invited to keep an open mind. Furthermore, it is the goal of the Trans Guy Archive to present topics and theory that is oftentimes dense and hard to understand in an engaging and easier to understand context -- but without erasing the nuance present in topics by oversimplifying them. Too often, professional academics purposefully write in over-complicated ways that make higher education inaccessible to the average person who does not have an engaged background in historical subjects. By using a blend of formal and informal language throughout the archive, the TGA hopes to ease the fear of studying complex topics and provide the average person a casual look into the workings of historians. TLDR -- You have no excuse to say "I ain't reading all that" ;-) On top of the archive, this space also aims to act as a sort of "one stop shop" for trans guys around the country and world to find educational and academic content about themselves, written by people just like them. In the Event Calendar, you may find a party in your city to make friends; in the Trans Guy Glossary, you can learn the definition of that word you've been seeing everywhere, and so on. The primary focus of the TGA will continue to be a record of trans guy history, but given how difficult it is for trans guys to find community and information - even within the wider queer community - we thought it'd be a good idea to have a single, organized space for everything you wanted to know. About Aidrian Aidrian (he/him) is the admin of the Trans Guy Archive! His mission is to make a unified space for all trans male/masculine content, both modern and historical. Aidrian recently graduated with a Master of Arts in History after finishing a Bachelor of Arts in History, both in New York state. His historical specialization concerns the European Middle Ages and general queer/transmasculine history. He does part-time museum work to pay the bills and lives with his parents, sister, and spoiled kitty. He's also working on two webcomics: Instructions to Light-Keepers - When sickly Victorian author Ambrose Bloom is sent away by his wealthy parents to work at a dilapidated lighthouse, he realizes all is not what it seems when a shadowy figure begins stalking him from afar -- thrusting everything Ambrose holds dear into turmoil. Persian Knights - After a Crusader flees his King's service, he finds unlikely employment in a war-torn enemy nation, where he must protect the Prince of a nation he once fought against, leading to unexpected bonds and a quest to dethrone those whom he once served. Some of his other interests include (but aren't limited to): Star Wars, any campy 80s horror movie, Tetris, too many open-world RPGs to count, D&D (forever DM), his aforementioned cat, deep sea marine life, and phallic imagery. Find Aidrian on... A few scholarly books and texts unrelated to trans guy history that Aidrian enjoys and recommends: White Rage: the Unspoken Truth of our Racial Divide by Carol Anderson America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence & and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s by Elizabeth Hinton Let Us Make Men: The Twentieth-Century Black Press and a Manly Vision for Racial Advancement by D'Weston Haywood Sex after Fascism: Memory and Morality in Twentieth-Century Germany by Dagmar Herzog Published Essays by Aidrian A Short History of Anti-Black Discrimination in American Medicine (2026) Do Clothes Make the Man? FTM crossdressing in the 18th-19th c. Anglo-American world (2026) Buboes, Baptisms, and Bills: The Black Death and its Impact on Faith and Labor in Post-Pandemic England (2024) From Schmaltz to Success: A Deli-cious Analysis of the History and Evolution of Ashkenazi Jewish Cuisine (2024) Into the Iron Closet: historiography of homosexuality in the USSR after World War II (2024) Eat or be “Eoten”: Homoerotic Battle and the Fear of Being the Loser (2023) Sign the guest book? Name (optional) I'm visiting the TGA from... (country, city, etc.) Doodle us something? Drawing mode selected. Drawing requires a mouse or touchpad. For keyboard accessibility, select Type or Upload. Leave us a comment! Sign the guestbook

Victorian Covers the majority of the 19th century and parts of the early 20th.

Newspapers Newspaper articles covering historical trans guys and transmasculine topics.

FTM was a quarterly newsletter started by activist and author Lou Sullivan in 1987. Sullivan, who had founded the organization FTM International, hoped to promote an understanding of transmasculine people and wanted to provide services and community to their lives. The FTM newsletter contained everything, like articles on topical FTM issues, local events, advertisements selling the latest stand-to-pee protheses, and a "classifieds" section for those looking for social connection. The FTM newsletter would run for sixty-seven issues over twenty-one years, from 1987 to 2008. After Sullivan's untimely death from AIDS-related illness, the responsibility passed on to author Jamison "James" Green. Some of the names and information in the newsletter below have been redacted for personal safety. (note: Due to a processing error, you may have to zoom in to read this file. Apologies) Unable to view the PDF file? Download the content below: This newsletter is courtesy of the University of Victoria's Transgender Archives. All rights belong to the original publishers. No copyright infringement is intended. The Trans Guy Archive shares this resource on our website for the purposes of education, research, and historical empowerment. Language: English Resource type: Newsletter Format: PDF Date published: May 1996 Uploaded to TGA: June 15th, 2026 Last updated: June 15th, 2026

FTM was a quarterly newsletter started by activist and author Lou Sullivan in 1987. Sullivan, who had founded the organization FTM International, hoped to promote an understanding of transmasculine people and wanted to provide services and community to their lives. The FTM newsletter contained everything, like articles on topical FTM issues, local events, advertisements selling the latest stand-to-pee protheses, and a "classifieds" section for those looking for social connection. The FTM newsletter would run for sixty-seven issues over twenty-one years, from 1987 to 2008. After Sullivan's untimely death from AIDS-related illness, the responsibility passed on to author Jamison "James" Green. Some of the names and information in the newsletter below have been redacted for personal safety. Unable to view the PDF file? Download the content below: This newsletter is courtesy of the University of Victoria's Transgender Archives. All rights belong to the original publishers. No copyright infringement is intended. The Trans Guy Archive shares this resource on our website for the purposes of education, research, and historical empowerment. Language: English Resource type: Newsletter Format: PDF Date published: January 1996 Uploaded to TGA: June 15th, 2026 Last updated: June 15th, 2026

FTM was a quarterly newsletter started by activist and author Lou Sullivan in 1987. Sullivan, who had founded the organization FTM International, hoped to promote an understanding of transmasculine people and wanted to provide services and community to their lives. The FTM newsletter contained everything, like articles on topical FTM issues, local events, advertisements selling the latest stand-to-pee protheses, and a "classifieds" section for those looking for social connection. The FTM newsletter would run for sixty-seven issues over twenty-one years, from 1987 to 2008. After Sullivan's untimely death from AIDS-related illness, the responsibility passed on to author Jamison "James" Green. Some of the names and information in the newsletter below have been redacted for personal safety. Unable to view the PDF file? Download the content below: This newsletter is courtesy of the University of Victoria Transgender Archives. All rights belong to the original publishers. No copyright infringement is intended. The Trans Guy Archive shares this resource on our website for the purposes of education, research, and historical empowerment. Language: English Resource type: Newsletter Format: PDF Date published: October 1995 Uploaded to TGA: June 15th, 2026 Last updated: June 15th, 2026