Transgender Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
110 free Transgender trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This transgender trivia quiz covers a century of trans history and the people who made it. You will find the pioneers (Lili Elbe, Dora Richter, Christine Jorgensen, Michael Dillon, Roberta Cowell), the activists of Compton's Cafeteria and Stonewall, the doctors and scientists who coined the words we use, and the origin of the transgender flag and the Transgender Day of Remembrance. There are questions on culture and firsts too: the first openly trans MP, member of Congress and four-star officer; the Oscar-winning films about trans lives; Laverne Cox on the cover of Time; Wendy Carlos, the Wachowskis and Pose; the tennis and weightlifting cases that changed sport; and third-gender traditions such as hijra, fa'afafine and two-spirit. Questions range from easy to expert, and every answer has been checked against a reliable source. It works for Pride quizzes, history classes, workplace inclusion events or a straightforward pub round.
30 of 110 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01To which city did Christine Jorgensen travel for her gender-affirming surgery in the early 1950s?
Copenhagen
Christine Jorgensen had her surgeries in Copenhagen in 1951-52 under endocrinologist Christian Hamburger; the US Army had drafted her in 1945, which is why her 1953 homecoming was framed as an 'ex-GI' story.
Q 02Which word completes the 1952 Daily News headline on Christine Jorgensen, "Ex-GI Becomes ___ Beauty"?
Blonde
The New York Daily News front page of 1 December 1952 read "Ex-GI Becomes Blonde Beauty"; the story broke while Jorgensen was abroad and made her a celebrity before she came home in February 1953.
Q 03In which city did Lili Elbe die in 1931 after her final surgery?
Dresden
Dresden was where Kurt Warnekros performed Lili Elbe's later operations at the Municipal Women's Clinic; she died in the city in September 1931 of complications that followed a uterus transplant.
Q 04Which physician founded the Institute for Sexual Science in 1919?
Magnus Hirschfeld
Magnus Hirschfeld left on a world lecture tour in 1930 and, warned off by Nazi threats, never lived at home again, dying in exile in 1935; his institute had pioneered early gender-affirming surgery.
Q 05In which city's Opernplatz did Nazi students burn the Institute for Sexual Science's library in May 1933?
Berlin
Berlin's Opernplatz saw the institute's library burned on 10 May 1933, four days after Nazi students looted the building; a bust of its founder went onto the bonfire too.
Q 06Dora Richter, the first known trans woman to complete gender-affirming surgery, had her operations in which country?
Germany
Germany: Dora Richter's operations ran from 1922 to 1931 while she worked as a maid at the Institute for Sexual Science; long presumed killed in the 1933 Nazi raid, she in fact lived until 1966.
Q 07The 1966 Compton's Cafeteria riot took place in the Tenderloin district of which city?
San Francisco
Compton's Cafeteria stood at Taylor and Turk Streets in San Francisco's Tenderloin; the August 1966 riot was largely forgotten until Susan Stryker's 2005 documentary Screaming Queens.
Q 08The Compton's Cafeteria riot reportedly began when a trans woman threw what at an officer?
A cup of coffee
In Susan Stryker's account, a policeman grabbed one of the trans women and she flung a cup of coffee in his face, setting off the fight that spilled out into the street.
Q 09According to Marsha P. Johnson, what did the "P" in her name stand for?
Pay it no mind
Johnson said the P stood for 'pay it no mind', her stock reply when asked about her gender; she co-founded STAR with Sylvia Rivera in 1970 after the Stonewall uprising.
Q 10In July 1992, Marsha P. Johnson's body was found floating in which body of water?
The Hudson River
The Hudson River is where Johnson's body was found on 6 July 1992; police ruled the death a suicide, but under public pressure they reopened the case in 2012 and changed the cause to undetermined.
Q 11At the 1973 Christopher Street Liberation Day rally, Sylvia Rivera famously shouted 'Y'all better' what?
Quiet down
Rivera's 'Y'all better quiet down' speech, bellowed over a booing crowd at the 1973 rally, attacked a movement that was pushing out the drag queens and trans people who had helped start it.
Q 12Which November 20 observance was begun by Gwendolyn Ann Smith?
Transgender Day of Remembrance
Transgender Day of Remembrance began as a vigil for a trans woman killed in 1998; its gatherings now read aloud the names of the trans people lost to violence in the past year.
Q 13Whose 1998 murder in Boston inspired vigils that grew into a yearly day of mourning?
Rita Hester
Q 21In July 2016 Sarah McBride became the first openly transgender person to speak at what kind of event?
A national party convention
A national party convention heard McBride pay tribute to her late husband Andrew Cray, a fellow advocate who died of cancer four days after their 2014 wedding; she spoke for the Democrats in Philadelphia.
Q 22Rachel Levine became the first openly transgender person to hold what rank in a US uniformed service?
Four-star officer
Four-star officer is the rank an assistant secretary for health holds when serving in uniform at the head of the US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps; Levine, a paediatrician, was sworn in on 19 October 2021.
Q 23Danica Roem, the first openly transgender person elected and seated in a US state legislature, won her 2017 race in which state?
Rita Hester's murder in her Allston apartment was never solved; Boston papers, an LGBT one among them, reported on her as a man, and protests against the coverage followed.
Q 14Michigan activist Rachel Crandall Crocker created which March 31 observance?
Transgender Day of Visibility
Transgender Day of Visibility began because the only trans observance she knew of mourned people who had been killed; she wanted a day that focused on the living.
Q 15Who created the transgender pride flag in 1999?
Monica Helms
Monica Helms, a US Navy veteran, designed the flag in 1999 after Michael Page, creator of the bisexual pride flag, urged her to make one for the trans community.
Q 16On the transgender pride flag, what does the central white stripe represent?
Intersex, transitioning or non-binary people
The flag's designer said the central white stripe stands for intersex, transitioning or non-binary people, in her words those with 'a neutral or undefined gender'; the blue and pink stripes borrow the traditional baby colours.
Q 17The transgender pride flag was first shown publicly in 2000 at a pride parade in which city?
Phoenix
Its designer lived in Phoenix and carried the flag in that city's pride parade in 2000, its first public outing; the original went to the Smithsonian in August 2014.
Q 18Which actress became the first openly transgender person on the cover of Time magazine, in June 2014?
Laverne Cox
Laverne Cox, Sophia in Orange Is the New Black, fronted Time's 'Transgender Tipping Point' issue weeks after a backlash over her omission from the Time 100, which fans protested as #whereislavernecox.
Q 19Georgina Beyer, the world's first openly transgender MP in 1999, sat in which country's parliament?
New Zealand
New Zealand's Georgina Beyer, a former sex worker, said so in Parliament when she backed the 2003 law that decriminalised prostitution; she had been mayor of Carterton before winning Wairarapa.
Q 20Sarah McBride, the first openly trans member of Congress, won a 2024 seat in which state?
Delaware
Delaware's Sarah McBride worked on Beau Biden's campaigns for attorney general as a teenager, and Joe Biden later wrote the foreword to her memoir; in 2020 she became the first openly trans state senator.
Virginia
Virginia's Danica Roem unseated Bob Marshall, a 13-term incumbent who called himself the state's 'chief homophobe', after a campaign she kept focused on traffic jams along Route 28.
Q 24Renée Richards won a 1977 court ruling allowing her to compete as a woman in which sport?
Tennis
Richards, an ophthalmologist, won a 1977 New York Supreme Court ruling against the US Tennis Association's chromosome test and played that year's US Open; she later coached Martina Navratilova to two Wimbledon titles.
Q 25Laurel Hubbard, the first openly transgender woman at an Olympics, competed in Tokyo in which sport?
Weightlifting
Hubbard competed in weightlifting in the women's +87 kg class at Tokyo in August 2021, failing all three snatch attempts and so recording no total.
Q 26Which country's Supreme Court legally recognised hijras and transgender people as a "third gender" in 2014?
India
India's Supreme Court did more than recognise them in the 2014 NALSA ruling: it ordered governments to treat the third gender as a disadvantaged class with access to welfare schemes, education and jobs.
Q 27Which umbrella term for Indigenous gender-variant people was adopted at a 1990 intertribal gathering in Winnipeg?
Two-spirit
Two-spirit was chosen to replace 'berdache', an anthropologists' label the delegates found offensive; it is a pan-tribal umbrella, and nations keep their own words, such as the Lakota winkte.
Q 28Fa'afafine, a recognised third gender, are part of the traditional culture of which Pacific islands?
Samoa
Samoa repealed a 1961 ban on 'female impersonation' only in 2013, even though fa'afafine are a recognised part of its traditional culture.
Q 29Which term coined by Havelock Ellis is named for an 18th-century French spy who lived for decades as a woman?
Eonism
Havelock Ellis coined eonism for the Chevalier d'Eon, who spied for Louis XV in Russia and England, fought in the Seven Years' War and lived publicly as a woman from 1777 until death in 1810.
Q 30Roberta Cowell, the first known British trans woman to have surgery in 1951, had earlier been a WWII what?
Fighter pilot
Cowell flew Typhoons as an RAF fighter pilot, was shot down in late 1944 and held as a prisoner of war; she was also a racing driver, and Michael Dillon performed one of her early operations.