Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/17-1618_hfci.pdf
Page Number: 71.0

34 

BOSTOCK v. CLAYTON COUNTY 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

merely feeble would be generous. 

C 
While  Americans  in  1964  would  have  been  shocked  to 
learn that Congress had enacted a law prohibiting sexual 
orientation  discrimination,  they  would  have  been  bewil-
dered to hear that this law  also forbids discrimination on 
the basis of “transgender status” or “gender identity,” terms 
that  would  have  left  people  at  the  time  scratching  their 
heads.  The term “transgender” is said to have been coined
“ ‘in the early 1970s,’ ”28 and the term “gender identity,” now
understood to mean “[a]n internal sense of being male, fe-
male or something else,”29 apparently first appeared in an
academic article in 1964.30  Certainly, neither term was in
common parlance; indeed, dictionaries of the time still pri-
marily defined the word “gender” by reference to grammat-
ical  classifications.  See,  e.g.,  American  Heritage  Diction-
ary, at 548 (def. 1(a)) (“Any set of two or more categories,
such as masculine, feminine, and neuter, into which words 
are divided . . . and that determine agreement with or the 

—————— 

28 Drescher, Transsexualism, Gender Identity Disorder and the DSM,

14 J. Gay & Lesbian Mental Health 109, 110 (2010). 

29 American  Psychological  Association,  49  Monitor  on  Psychology,  at 

32. 

30 Green,  Robert  Stoller’s  Sex  and  Gender:  40  Years  On,  39  Archives 
Sexual Behav. 1457 (2010); see Stoller, A Contribution to the Study of 
Gender Identity, 45 Int’l J. Psychoanalysis 220 (1964).  The term appears 
to have been coined a year or two earlier.  See Haig, The Inexorable Rise
of  Gender  and  the  Decline  of  Sex:  Social  Change  in  Academic  Titles, 
1945–2001,  33  Archives  Sexual  Behav.  87,  93  (2004)  (suggesting  the 
term was first introduced at 23rd International Psycho-Analytical Con-
gress in Stockholm in 1963); J. Meyerowitz, How Sex Changed 213 (2002)
(referring to founding of “Gender Identity Research Clinic” at UCLA in 
1962).  In his book, Sex and Gender, published in 1968, Robert Stoller 
referred  to  “gender  identity”  as  “a  working  term”  “associated  with”  his 
research team but noted that they were not “fixed on copyrighting the 
term or on defending the concept as one of the splendors of the scientific 
world.”  Sex and Gender, p. viii.