Abstract Connections between trans identity and the sacred are a common feature in US popular culture. While slogans such as “trans people are sacred” are relatively new, trans sacrality has a much longer history. This article examines the historical connections between gender variance and spirituality, from the suppression of gender variance in nineteenth- and twentieth-century sexological writing to its articulation in esoteric periodicals and activist writing. Returning to fin-de-siècle writing on sex illuminates a series of questions concerning the differing constructions of gender variance by sexologists and esotericists, racially inflected anxieties about sex and gender, and the ongoing correlation between heresy and trans identity. The article concludes with a consideration of the possibilities enabled by the capacious conceptions of sex and gender that developed beyond the realm of sexology.
C. Libby (Sat,) studied this question.