The return of the trans underground

"In the early 1970s, long before social media and more than a decade before the earliest internet forums, a woman named Peggie Ames became a human rolodex for trans women in New York state. Born in Buffalo, Ames spent years working for gay rights organizations in the rural and suburban areas of Western New York. In the days before the internet, it wasn't easy to meet other trans folks outside the densely populated boroughs of New York City."

"But Ames had built an extensive social network of trans women and cis allies through her work with the Erickson Educational Foundation, which funded research on trans medical care, and the Mattachine Society of the Niagara Frontier, a local offshoot of the pre-Stonewall-era gay rights group of the same name. After she was forcibly outed in 1973, Ames became one of the relatively few openly transsexual women with a public profile at the time. In the pre-internet days, this made her someone that trans women turned to in the hopes of reaching others like them."

"Ames was one of several trans women who ran underground trans social networks like this in the '70s and '80s. It worked like this: A well-connected and more publicly visible trans woman would receive letters from other trans people from around the country. She would then dig through her little black book and write back to the sender, including contact information for other trans people she had previously connected with."

Peggie Ames, born in Buffalo, worked for gay rights organizations across rural and suburban Western New York and built an extensive network of trans women and cis allies through the Erickson Educational Foundation and the Mattachine Society of the Niagara Frontier. After being forcibly outed in 1973, she became one of few openly transsexual women with a public profile and knew about 100 other trans people in Western New York by the late 1970s. She used her visibility to connect isolated trans people by sharing contacts from her little black book, creating ad hoc pen‑pal networks that served as lifelines before the internet.

Read at The Verge