Alan L. Hart

"I am happier since I made this change than I ever have in my life, and I will continue this way as long as I live[...] I have never concealed anything regarding my [change] to men's clothing[...] I came home to show my friends that I am ashamed of nothing."

– Alan L. Hart

Alan L. Hart (1890-1962), a doctor and novelist. Records show that from a young age, Hart was not comfortable with the gender he was assigned at birth nor the roles that came along with it. Alan himself made this very clear, telling his parents that if they let him cut his hair, he could finally become a boy. After his father had died when he was just two years old, he told his mother he would be the “man of the house” now. While his mother called this foolish, there wasn’t much more backlash from his family on this issue.
 
His mother remarried, and they moved to live with his grandparents in Oregon. At this time, Hart was cared for by his mother, stepfather, and grandparents, and he developed a solid bond with his grandparents. His grandparents respected his gender identity, from available evidence, without too much question, even naming him as a grandson on their epitaphs. They allowed him to go around in clothes that were traditionally seen as masculine at that time and perform tasks that were done by men. His grandfather became a role model for him, making him toys and allowing him to follow him around while working. It was only in later years, when the family moved to Albany, New York, that this dynamic shifted.
 
When he was enrolled in school in Albany, Hart was expected to dress in traditionally feminine clothing, which he resented. It was also at this age that his attraction to women became evident. He developed crushes on female classmates and teachers, while he did not act on any of these attractions beyond fantasy, he built solid friendships with most of the women to whom he was attracted. He also began writing under a male name, a decision that was not uncommon at the time, and he wrote about subjects he may not have been able to under his birth name.
 
After high school, Hart found a place for himself at Albany College (now Louis and Clark College). He participated in numerous school activities and became an engaged and passionate student. Here, he began a relationship with a woman named Eva Cushman, who played a significant role in his life.
 
It is essential now to note that at this time, most people perceived Alan L. Hart as a girl, and his relationship with Eva Cushman was seen as a lesbian relationship. This went over rather well with the student body, and fellow students referenced their relationship in supportive ways in school publications. Hart even published a poem about Cushman in the school newspaper, written from the perspective of a man who had fallen in love with her.
 
As Hart gained approval from his peers, he grew to accept himself more, and he began again to wear traditionally masculine clothes to formal occasions. Unfortunately, this caused a rift in his relationship with Cushman as she wanted him to wear more dresses. Hart began to make more female friends, some platonic and some less so, finding relationships with men harder to maintain and having trouble with some male students who didn’t react well to being rejected by him romantically. As Hart excelled both socially and academically, his financial situation went the opposite way.
 
The money he had inherited from his father was spent mostly on Eva, and he concealed his debts from her as they continued to grow. After their relationship had ended, Hart received support for his troubles from an older woman he had struck up a relationship with. From that point, Hart cycled through several relationships with different women without too much societal backlash. It was only when he was well into adulthood that he fully realized his feelings were not considered appropriate by society at the time.
 
Hart went to a psychiatrist to cure a fear of the sound of gunfire, but this quickly morphed into something else. The psychiatrist, J. Allan Gilbert, narrowed down on Hart’s attraction to girls and Hart, who now knew that this was inappropriate by his society’s standards, asked to be cured of his sexuality. As with all conversion therapy, though, it failed, and Hart became frustrated.
 
After a period of unsuccessful conversion therapy, Hart came into Gilbert’s office and asked for gender confirmation surgery to be performed on him. He used many cases to debate this, including one of eugenics, suggesting that it was better to sterilize him, so he did not pass on his sexuality to a second generation. He reasoned that his attraction would not be going away, and he wanted to present and be known to society as a man. After some consideration, Gilbert agreed, and Hart became the first case in America where a psychiatrist recommended removing a healthy organ, based solely on an individual's gender identification. Hart received gender confirmation surgery in 1918.
 
It is hard now to identify the truth of Hart’s life because so much conflict exists. There is little record of Hart’s life from Hart himself, as, after his death, he requested that all of his letters and photographs be destroyed. In Gilbert’s notes, it seems clear that from a young age, Hart identified with men and felt more at home in more masculine settings, but it is possible that these records were biased. Hart would not have been the first case of attempting to disguise same-gender attraction by presenting as a different gender than was assigned at birth, so it is difficult to tell what is the truth of Hart’s identity. Hart had expressed a desire to marry a woman before discussing his transition, and without his transition, he would not have been able to do this legally. So it is not out of the realm of possibility that his transition was a way for him to have his relationships recognized by the law. However, to say that as a certainty is dismissive of the entire second half of Hart’s life after his transition.

Hart’s gender confirmation surgery, along with his medical degree, allowed him significantly more freedom in his career path than he would have experienced otherwise. He eloped with a woman named Inez Stark, and they moved to Oregon, where he was given a job in a hospital. Underneath his success, trouble soon breached the surface again.

In Hart’s career, most of his social life and all of his work, he was known as a man; but this did not last. He came across a person from his life pre-transition, and this person recognized him. This began a pattern of moving from place to place, struggling to avoid being outed while also attempting to keep his medical career moving forward. This constant state of worry and movement is part of what ended Hart’s first marriage in 1925. Within the same year, Hart remarried, this time the woman he would be with for the rest of his life, Edna Ruddick. With Edna, Hart would begin to engage in social advocacy and his work with tuberculosis research, a disease that carried a significant amount of stigma at the time. 

His work comprised researching new ways to discover the disease earlier, and he found that the development of tuberculosis could be seen using an X-ray. This way, people could be treated before it was too late. Hart used this practice to give checkups to people all around America, going to many rural communities to help people discover the disease early, giving them greater chances of survival. It is estimated that his work alongside others saved thousands of lives within America. 

Hart took up writing, releasing successful medical novels that included queer characters and how they dealt with discrimination within their workplace, something he had to deal with himself. His writing reportedly also helped his mental state as Hart himself wrote: “I am sure I would have done something rather desperate if I had not turned to writing.”

With four popular novels, Hart was doing well for himself. The opportunity to take hormones was given to him, and he began to pass more easily, growing facial hair and his voice deepening. He was by all reports happy in his marriage, his job, and his writing. He grew as an active member of communities and even became a leader at his local Unitarian Church. 

In 1962 Hart died of heart failure at the age of 72. After his death, his wife carried out his will, destroying his letters and photographs. She also established a fund for research into leukemia in his name as his mother had died of leukemia much earlier. 

It was long after Hart’s death that historian Jonathan Ned Katz identified Hart as the man from Gilbert’s notes, who had been recorded under the pseudonym “H.” Since that time, there has been a significant amount of debate as to Hart’s sexuality and gender identity. Originally Katz believed Hart to be a lesbian, saying that Hart: 

“regarded herself as a boy"-but only in the sense of "wanting pockets on her clothes" (a poignant sign of "masculinity" mentioned twice by Dr. Gilbert), in wearing short hair end trousers, in playing boys' games, in reading adventure stories and fantasizing herself as the romantic, dashing hero, in hating housework and "small talk," in being inquisitive about the world, an active, "obstinate, independent child," in having "masculine ambitions," in loving and wanting to be loved by another female.

Clearly, "H" could only perceive her situation in the world in heterosexual terms, according to the traditional heterosexual model of male-female husband-wife relations. She found no alternative, no way of transcending this socially dominant model.

According to her report, "H" had "no thought of shame" about her first active sexual relations with women. Shame came later, she says; it was learned--from such sources as medical textbooks in which she read about her "true condition." It is noteworthy that this shame only comes to her as an adult; so prevalent and widely accepted today is the idea that all-important feelings are acquired and set in childhood. It is noteworthy that if her analysis with Dr. Gilbert did not itself create her feeling of shame about sexual relations with women, it intensified it. This story represents one more example of the pernicious treatment of gay people by the medical profession. "H" entered therapy to cure a specific, minor phobic; she ended by having a hysterectomy.

It is precisely the late-created shame "H" felt, and her analysis itself, that motivated her request to be sterilized. Since there was obviously no likelihood of "H" becoming pregnant, her desire to be sterilized expresses her need to neutralize guilt about sexual relations with women, to legitimize for herself her socially unsanctioned relations. Despite her history of sexual relationships with women, "H" apparently still needed to come to terms with feelings about the impropriety of two women having sex. Although her hysterectomy was in a sense voluntary, the social pressures to which she was subjected suggest that in another, equally true sense, it was socially coerced. Notable also is the complicity here of an even rather sympathetic, undogmatic psychiatrist in his patient's strange move to be sterilized–a move that may be characterized as justification for punishment, a psychic ploy gay people sometimes have in the past adopted to legitimize themselves. There is a macabre irony in this not unkind doctor's falling readily into the sadistic role offered him by his patient.”

And there is possible truth to some of these assertions. Hart went to Gilbert for conversion therapy, so it is unlikely that his sexuality was something he embraced, and Gilbert never encouraged Hart to embrace it. Even after Hart’s transition, Gilbert had doubts, writing: 
“The final step of marriage was taken to complete the picture of normal life, so far as such is possible under the conditions detailed above. This feature of the affair was the most doubtful of the whole program, and it received my protest, though I must confess that my protest was indefensible except on the grounds of a prejudice and a habit of thinking begotten of long years of conformity to social dogmata, most of which are indefensible. At any rate, it was done-possibly for the best. There are certainly numerous and rational arguments in defence of the procedure.”

While the man concluded to allow it, he had problems with what he perceived as two women marrying, and it is near impossible that this attitude didn’t affect Hart at all. 

But at the same time, Hart was able to be his full and authentic self after his transition, no matter what he considered his full and authentic self to be. According to his wife, he was not a lesbian, and she refused to talk to Katz after he made that assertion about her husband. Eventually,  Katz backed down from his original position, saying: 

“In my earlier research on Hart, I made the mistake of trying to claim Hart as a lesbian. Now I think it's more important to try to understand how Hart identified her or himself at different times in her/his life cycle.”

And that is a fair position to take. Maybe, there were points in his life where Hart identified as a lesbian, but that doesn’t mean that lesbian is the only identity that can ever be ascribed to him.

It has been said many times, but it is worth repeating: gender and sexuality are fluid. Not only do people grow and learn more about themselves, but also, words change. There is no way to know how Hart would have identified today. While the word “transsexual” existed at the time, it was far from popular, so the fact that there isn’t evidence of him identifying under that label could just be because he simply didn’t know it existed yet. 

His identity will always remain a mystery because he is not here to clarify it. In this article, the use of he/him/his pronouns is because those are the ones he preferred in his later years. Whether he wanted to be known as a woman is impossible to tell, so all that can be done is to respect his most recent wishes: he wanted to be known as a man.  

In the end, there isn’t always a simple answer, sometimes because there is too much nuance to condense into one, and sometimes because there isn’t one. And in Hart’s case, it is a healthy combination of both. Humans are not simple creatures; as people change, labels become outdated, and there is always more to learn about ourselves and others. If you’re not willing to move with the constant shifting, you will be left behind. It is worth looking at people like Katz, who change their views as more information and viewpoints come to light and commend them for that action. Growth and change should be encouraged, but demanding “simple answers,” hinders it, purposefully or not. 

Hart was an incredible person, and someone the queer community can be proud to have as a part of it, even if there is know way to know exactly where he would have fit.

[Disclaimer: some of the sources may contain triggering material.]

Young, M. “Alan Hart (1890-1962)”. The Oregon Encyclopedia. Retrieved May 21 2017 fromhttps://oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/hart_alan_1890_1962_/

Mejia, A. “Alan L. Hart”. OutHistory. Retrieved May 21 2017 fromhttp://outhistory.org/exhibits/show/tgi-bios/alan-l-hart

Gay and Lesbian Archives of the Pacific Northwest. “Dr. Alan L. Hart”. Retrieved May 21 2017
from https://www.glapn.org/6310hartequi.html

Booth, B. and Lauderdale, T. (2000). “Alberta Lucille Hart / Dr. Alan L. Hart: An Oregon
"Pioneer"”. Oregon Cultural Heritage Comission. Retrieved May 21 2017 fromhttp://www.ochcom.org/hart/

Moore, M. (December 20 2010). “TG History: The Measure of a Man — Dr. Alan L. Hart”. Big

Closet World. Retrieved May 21 2017 fromhttp://www.tgforum.com/wordpress/index.php/tg-history-the-measure-of-a-man-dr-alan-l-hart/

Hansen, B. (January 2002). “Public Careers and Private Sexuality: Some Gay and Lesbian Lives
in the History of Medicine and Public Health”. American Journal of Public Health 92.1
(2002): 36–44. Retrieved May 21 2017 fromhttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1447383/

OutHistory.org. “J. Allen Gilbert: "Homosexuality and Its Treatment," October 1920”. Retrieved
May 21 2017 from http://outhistory.org/exhibits/show/gender-crossing-women-1782-192/homosexuality-and-its-treatmen