The Transgender Usenet Archive (TUA) offers access to over 400,000 posts (from 1994 to 2013) from six English language transgender-themed Usenet newsgroups:
| Newsgroup Name | Founding Year |
|---|---|
| alt.transgendered | 1992 |
| soc.support.transgendered | 1994 |
| alt.support.crossdressing | 1996 |
| alt.fashion.crossdressing | 1996 |
| alt.support.srs | 1997 |
| uk.support.crossdressing | 1999 |
All content has been indexed by newsgroup and year. Currently, the archive is based on files held in the Internet Archive's Usenet Historical Collection, though it may expand in the future. The TUA is built using the Bookworm API, developed by Benjamin Schmidt at Northeastern University and Erez Aiden at the Rice Cultural Observatory. For more information about the project, see the offical project page.
Given the sensitive nature of some of the content in the archive, no headers (some of which contained identifying information) have been included; each post includes sender name, subject line, date of posting, if original or a reply, and message content. I’ve also manually removed any 64-bit code for images (such as personal photographs, etc) that include identifying features (such as full body or face shots); these images have been marked with "<IMAGE REDACTED FOR PRIVACY>." For more information on the ethical principles of the archive, please see this post. If you believe your messages might be included in the archive and would like them removed, please feel free to contact me at avery.dame AT gmail.com
How to use the archive: You can search the archive for any single word or two word phrase, and searches can be filtered by newsgroup or post publication year. By default, all searches are case sensitive, but this setting can be changed under the "Case" header on the far right corner next to the "Search" button. Each search result has a unique numerical identifier, which can be input in the accompanying database to read the full message text and other information.
This project has been generously supported by:
