Digital Transgender Archive

Wearing Transgender History

The DTA recently uploaded one of our more unique collections: our first collection of clothing items! The Wearing Gay History Online Materials collection includes T-shirts relating to transgender history. This diverse collection contains T-shirts from South Africa as well as shirts from numerous locales in the United States, including Texas, Pittsburgh, and Washington, D.C. Some of the shirts were produced for specific events, while others promote freedom of gender expression and specific movements within the trans community.

One of these movements was the “Legalize Trans*” campaign, which sought to expand upon the American Apparel “Legalize Gay” campaign. The “Legalize Trans*” campaign was started by Asher Kolieboi and Brian Murphy because they felt that there was a lack of inclusivity in the American Apparel campaign. More broadly, the “Legalize Trans*” campaign sought to provide more visibility to the exclusion of transgender issues from much of the national Lesbian and Gay rights movement. Fittingly, the campaign started by Asher and Brian also made use of the T-shirt platform. Two of the shirts that they produced are contained in the Wearing Gay History collection.