Digital Transgender Archive

Listen to Adam’s Word

Adam’s Word, the monthly newsletter of the Adam Society, provided resources, personal accounts, and support to female-to-male crossdressers, transsexuals, and their significant others. Adam Society community extended to individual members’ families and friends, and thus, was not simply concerned with a gender minority status, but the person as a whole, interpersonal relationships and all.  

After documenting and reviewing the material from this collection, we discovered many interesting things. The name of the publication, Adam’s Word, seems to allude to the story of Adam and Eve and might then toy with normative conceptualizations of what maleness means and the church’s historic and ongoing role in regulating and defining gender ideologies. Adam’s Word might then be it’s own sort of “gospel” by trans men and for trans men. Although this is not explicitly stated from Adam’s Word, we feel that the name itself creates discussion surrounding cis-normativity poking fun at the supposed first man to inhabit Earth. Additionally, for an organization, it is unusual given other collections within the archive to have flyers about meetings handwritten instead of printed. This streamlined method to promoting meetings and information reveals more humility from the organization that is more personable.