--- title: The Danish Girl and Other Reminders Gender Was Never Simple description: The vocabulary has evolved, but gender non-conformity is far from modern canonical: https://time.com/4118940/the-danish-girl-history/ author: Lily Rothman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-11-27T17:00:13.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T08:57:31.723Z article:section: History og:title: What 'The Danish Girl' Reminds Us About Transgender People Throughout History og:description: The word 'transgender' didn't appear in TIME until the late '90s og:url: https://time.com/4118940/the-danish-girl-history/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltce827390f2a760a1/698871c38e06012a4b46363c/danish-girl.jpeg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: danish girl og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: What 'The Danish Girl' Reminds Us About Transgender People Throughout History twitter:description: The word 'transgender' didn't appear in TIME until the late '90s twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltce827390f2a760a1/698871c38e06012a4b46363c/danish-girl.jpeg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # What _The Danish Girl_ Reminds Us About Transgender People Throughout History ## Video: Behind the Scenes of Laverne Cox's TIME Cover Shoot [Watch (HLS stream): Behind the Scenes of Laverne Cox's TIME Cover Shoot](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/16Vyqo82.m3u8) (1:40)  _Published 2014-05-30. Actress and LGBT activist Laverne Cox talks to TIME about acceptance of transgender people and awareness of discrimination and civil rights issues_  by [Lily Rothman](/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Nov 27, 2015 5:00 PM CUT  Eddie Redmayne stars as Lili Elbe, in Tom Hooper’s The Danish Girl Eddie Redmayne stars as Lili Elbe, in Tom Hooper’s The Danish GirlFocus Features  by [Lily Rothman](/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Nov 27, 2015 5:00 PM CUT The new film _The Danish Girl_ comes at a [time](http://time.com/vault/issue/2014-06-09/page/1/ "undefined") of increased visibility and acceptance of transgender people. But the story of Lili Elbe, a transgender woman who was one of the first known recipients of a sex-change operation, is also a public reminder that complicated matters of gender and sex are nothing new. The early years of TIME magazine—which coincided with the last years of Elbe’s life, before she died in 1931 not long after one of her surgeries—are rife with articles about people who were gender-nonconforming in one way or another. In some cases those stories, with their outdated phrasings, only put into perspective how much things have changed. Other articles, however, are written with a lack of judgment that may surprise modern readers. In one 1929 [example](http://time.com/vault/issue/1929-03-18/page/27/ "undefined"), the magazine reported on a British military captain who was revealed to have been a biological woman who had successfully passed as a man for five years, marrying and raising two children whom she had borne prior to “yielding” to “her tendency to transvestism.” Captain Barker’s biological sex became public when he was processed by a prison for men after being unable to pay a court fine. The discovery was a curiosity to a public “whose vocabularies do not even yet contain the noun transvestite, the verb transvestize, the adjective transvestile, the adverb transvestily,” TIME noted. A 1936 story about a turn-of-the-century medical text about sex [explained](http://time.com/vault/issue/1936-03-09/page/69/ "undefined") the situation in words that such a public _could_ understand: “I often reflect sadly that I have no earthly chance of looking altogether like a woman,” one man who liked to dress in women’s clothes told the author. “Yet my eyes and smile are regarded as truly feminine, and happiness \[brought on by the clothing\] shows itself and soon improves my appearance.” It’s a fitting reminder of the limits and complications of our vocabulary. The words that might be used today to express one’s identity weren’t always available, and nor were the social frameworks that might make that expression possible. The term “transgender” would not appear in the pages of TIME [until the late 1990s](http://time.com/vault/issue/1998-07-20/page/50/ "undefined"). **_Read more from 1998, here in the TIME Vault:_** [Trans Across America](http://time.com/vault/issue/1998-07-20/page/50/ "undefined") ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4118940/the-danish-girl-history/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4118940/the-danish-girl-history/"},"headline":"What The Danish Girl Reminds Us About Transgender People Throughout History","datePublished":"2015-11-27T17:00:13.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T08:57:31.723Z","description":"The vocabulary has evolved, but gender non-conformity is far from modern","url":"https://time.com/4118940/the-danish-girl-history/","keywords":["movies","Living","gender","health"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltce827390f2a760a1/698871c38e06012a4b46363c/danish-girl.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Lily Rothman","jobTitle":"Rothman is managing editor at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/"}],"articleSection":"History","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltce827390f2a760a1/698871c38e06012a4b46363c/danish-girl.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"danish girl","caption":"Eddie Redmayne stars as Lili Elbe, in Tom Hooper’s THE DANISH GIRL, released by Focus Features.Credit: Focus Features","creditText":"Focus Features","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/history/","name":"History"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/movies/","name":"movies"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4118940/the-danish-girl-history/","name":"What The Danish Girl Reminds Us About Transgender People Throughout History"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Behind the Scenes of Laverne Cox's TIME Cover Shoot","description":"Actress and LGBT activist Laverne Cox talks to TIME about acceptance of transgender people and awareness of discrimination and civil rights issues","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/16Vyqo82/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2014-05-30T20:44:41.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/16Vyqo82.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/4118940/the-danish-girl-history/","duration":"PT1M40S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/4118940/the-danish-girl-history/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```