I recently ran across an article I wrote back in 1983 which was published in the Renaissance Update newsletter. The topic was how trans women were accessing hormone therapy by bypassing the usual medical route. In retrospect, the article has aged fairly well, though I was completely oblivious to my white, middle-class privilege at the time I wrote it. When I became a health care provider in the late 1990s, I was even more convinced that the safest way to access hormones was through a medical provider. Still, the article illustrates that for many many years, trans folk have been remarkably resilient, and to this day, access to “black market” estrogens is still a thing.
Black Market Breasts
