Jennie June (1874 – after 1922) was a pseudonymous American writer known for advocating for the rights of people who did not conform to gender and sexual norms.
June was one of the earliest transgender individuals to publish an autobiography in the United States. Although June expressed a lifelong desire to be a woman, June consistently used masculine pronouns in reference to themself. June wrote of feeling like a combination of male and female and of their practice of alternating between these two gender expressions.Jennie June. "Prologue: I. How I Came to Write This Book." The Riddle of the Underworld (partial manuscript). Out History. 1921. https://outhistory.org/exhibits/show/earl-lind/manuscript/prologue
They published their first memoir, The Autobiography of an Androgyne, in 1918, and their second, The Female-Impersonators, in 1922. June also wrote an unpublished third autobiography in 1921. June claimed their goal in writing these books was to help create an accepting environment for young adults who do not conform to gender or sexual norms.Meyerowitz, J. "Thinking Sex With An Androgyne". GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 17.1 (2010): 97–105. Web. Retrieved April 13, 2017. In 1895, June created the Cercle Hermaphroditos, an organization for the rights of androgynes. Most members were claimed by June as being ultra-androgynes.
June's identity is unknown; they also wrote under the pseudonyms Earl Lind and Ralph Werther. Queer history researcher Channing Gerard Joseph believes that June was most likely the writer and journalist Israel Mowry Saben (1870–1950), an early advocate for gender and sexual diversity.
Early life According to their pseudonymous memoir, Jennie June was born into a Puritan family in 1874 in Connecticut.Jennie June. "II. The Boy is Father to the Man." The Riddle of the Underworld (partial manuscript). Out History. 1921. https://outhistory.org/exhibits/show/earl-lind/manuscript/two They were assigned male at birth. June was the fourth child out of eleven children of a middle-class family. As a child, June believed that they would only wear skirts in adulthood and had asked friends to refer to them by "Jennie". Though, when June was seven, they would be breeched. This led to June experiencing bouts of depression, and prompted June to start wearing their sister's clothing, and praying to live as a woman.
In childhood, June was sent to a school for boys who needed strict discipline; following this experience, they became very shy and introverted.Madison, Mila. "Jennie June and the Cercle Hermaphroditos". Transgender Universe. N.p., March 5, 2016. Web. Retrieved April 13, 2017. In June's adolescence they experienced some breast growth, though June would state they had felt disappointed by their genitalia staying the same. During this time, June would also start praying to no longer be gender-nonconforming and to not desire men.
At eighteen, due to bouts of depression pertaining to their gender identity, June would seek help from venereologist Dr. Prince A. MorrowBert Hansen, "'Discovery' of homosexuals." Framing Disease: Studies in Cultural History. 1992. Page 119. and psychiatrist Dr. Robert S. Newton.In re Alma Louise Larner. New York Supreme Court. February 21, 1902. P. 16. https://books.google.com/books?id=Ad84AqOJaAwC&q=newton&pg=PA16 We are citing this legal document as proof that there was a psychiatrist in New York around this time period named Dr. Robert S. Newton. This shows this name was not an invention of June's autobiography. Morrow and Newton had seen gender nonconformity as a defect and attempted to cure June through various treatments, which included drugs, hypnosis, aphrodisiacs, and electroconvulsive therapy.Jennie June. Autobiography of an Androgyne. P. 68. https://books.google.com/books?id=KXxTbGocCvQC&dq=%22Robert+S.+Newton%22+alienist&pg=PA68 These treatments had no effect, and June remained gender nonconforming and depressed.
June later graduated with honors at an unidentified university and then attended graduate school but was subsequently expelled after a physician notified the university that June was gender nonconforming. June experienced depression and suicidal ideation following this expulsion. Though it was also influential to their later writings.Museum of the City of New York, "Transgender in Gilded New York." Hidden Voices. Page 3. https://cdn-blob-prd.azureedge.net/prd-pws/docs/default-source/default-document-library/learn-at-home-2020/grade-12-learn-at-home-social-studies-compiled.pdf?sfvrsn=812fa9bf_4
Personal life In June's professional life, they had presented as a man. They worked as a law clerk for Clark Bell, who was an editor for The Medico-Legal Journal and its publishing company. Many who had worked with June would state that June was uncomfortable around the presence of men and often disengaged from topics of a sexual nature. At the same time, they would also be noted to be hardworking by co-workers.Museum of the City of New York, "Transgender in Gilded New York." Hidden Voices. Page 2. https://cdn-blob-prd.azureedge.net/prd-pws/docs/default-source/default-document-library/learn-at-home-2020/grade-12-learn-at-home-social-studies-compiled.pdf?sfvrsn=812fa9bf_4 Museum of the City of New York, "Transgender in Gilded New York." Hidden Voices. Page 4. https://cdn-blob-prd.azureedge.net/prd-pws/docs/default-source/default-document-library/learn-at-home-2020/grade-12-learn-at-home-social-studies-compiled.pdf?sfvrsn=812fa9bf_4
Identity and transition In June's writings, June had described themself with all of these contemporary words for their gender and sexual variance: androgyne, an ancient word meaning one who has a combination of masculine and feminine qualities. invert, a contemporary word from psychiatry and sexology for all kinds of people who would in the 20th and 21st centuries be called lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT).Havelock Ellis's definition was "sexual instinct turned by inborn constitutional abnormality toward persons of the same sex". Ellis, 1. urning, a new contemporary word meaning someone assigned male at birth who is attracted to men. This word was created by urnings themselves who advocated for their rights. It was often Anglicized as "Uranian", but June used the original Germanic version "urning", for themself. Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1825–1895) developed this theory in which men who are attracted to men and women who are attracted to women are thus because they are members of a third sex, a mixture of both male and female, with the psyche or essence of the "opposite" sex, even though their bodies may not look like a mixture of male and female. The overall phenomenon he called Uranismus (in the original German: ); gay men were uranians (German ), lesbians were uraniads (German , as -in is the feminine suffix); whereas heterosexuals were Dionings, so bisexual men were uranodionings, and so on, all of which were distinct from zwitter (intersex). Ulrichs based this naming system on Plato's Symposium, where two different kinds of love [are] ruled by two different goddesses of love—Aphrodite, daughter of Uranus, and Aphrodite, daughter of Zeus and Dione. Aphrodite rules those who love the opposite sex.We Are Everywhere: A Historical Sourcebook of Gay and Lesbian Politics. P. 61. https://books.google.com/books?id=rDG3xdtDutkC&dq=urning&pg=PA65 Ulrichs argued that their condition was as natural and healthy as that of what we now call heterosexual people, and he started the movement fighting for their equal legal rights to express their love "between consenting adults, with the free consent of both parties", in their words from 1870, and that they should not be pathologized nor criminalized for doing so.Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, "Araxes: Appeal for the liberation of the urning's nature from penal law." 1870. Excerpt reprinted in: We Are Everywhere: A Historical Sourcebook of Gay and Lesbian Politics. P. 63–65. https://books.google.com/books?id=rDG3xdtDutkC&dq=urning&pg=PA65 Although Uranismus was generally addressed in terms of orientation, Ulrichs specifically described various categories of uranians in terms of their gender nonconformity and gender variance. For example, in regard to feminine gay men or queens (whom he called Weiblings), Ulrichs wrote in 1879, "The Weibling is a total mixture of male and female, in which the female element is even predominant, a thoroughly hermaphroditically organized being. Despite his male sexual organs, he is more woman than man. He is a woman with male sexual organs. He is a neutral sex. He is a neuter. He is the hermaphrodite of the ancients."Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, "Critical arrow." 1879. Excerpt reprinted in: We Are Everywhere: A Historical Sourcebook of Gay and Lesbian Politics. P. 64–65. https://books.google.com/books?id=rDG3xdtDutkC&dq=urning&pg=PA65 June compares themself to this ancient deity Hermaphroditus in their own self-portrait photography. bisexual, in the sense of being both male and female, as June said they were never attracted to women at all. "instinctive female impersonator", meaning that it was their nature to want to live as a woman. fairie [sic], a word widely used in the contemporary underworld for people who were assigned male at birth and who had receptive sex with men.Jennie June, Autobiography of an Androgyne. p. xxiv. https://books.google.com/books?id=KXxTbGocCvQC&dq=%22Robert+S.+Newton%22+alienist&pg=PR24 Ultra-Androgyne, meaning those at the very end of Androgyne who both felt and acted predominantly female. Those of this type were described as shaving and plucking their beard hair, in public preferring bright clothing in lieu of the risk associated with female clothing, although some risqué did don the latter. Furthermore, they usually took on submissive/passive roles during intercourse and despised vulgarity and other typically masculine things. Additionally, June states the correct pronouns for an Ultra-Androgyne would be he/her. A quote from her second book reads: "Superficially and according to man-made law, ultra-androgynes are men. According to the unabridged dictionary, they are neither men nor women. That is, they are capable neither of begetting nor conceiving. But in respect to mind and feelings, in respect to their protoplasm—and thus essentially—they are women." June estimated they numbered at least 1 in every 300 individuals globally. June's third doctor was a psychiatrist who understood inversion better. (The transcription of the manuscript of The Riddle of the Underworld also calls him Dr. Robert S. Newton, giving this name to two different doctors, which is a transcription error.) The psychiatrist taught June that being an androgyne was natural for them and not a "depravity". This finally cured June's lifelong depression, because instead of trying to purge themself of their inversion out of the fear that it was a sin, they instead concluded that God had predestined them to be an invert.
According to one autobiography, June had engaged in "intimate relations" with 800 young men, half of whom were volunteer soldiers or sailors.
At the age of 28, June fulfilled their lifelong desire to have an orchiectomy, the removal of the testicles. June expected this would make them healthier and decrease their extreme and "disturbing" desires for sex and eliminate some masculine features they disliked, such as facial hair. During that era, there was the incorrect but widespread medical belief that nocturnal emissions would damage a person's health and intelligence, and June was fearful of that possibility. Castration was one of the commonly recommended treatments thought to cure males of inversion.
Community and activism