Transgender Trivia
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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 German city did Lili Elbe die after her final surgery?
Dresden
Lili Elbe's later operations were performed by Kurt Warnekros at the Dresden Municipal Women's Clinic; she died there of complications weeks after a uterus transplant, her fourth operation.
Q 04Which German physician founded the Institute for Sexual Science in 1919?
Magnus Hirschfeld
His institute offered some of the world's first gender-affirming medical care, including surgery, at a time when nowhere else would.
Q 05In which city's Opernplatz did Nazi students burn the Institute for Sexual Science's library in May 1933?
Berlin
Nazi students looted the institute on 6 May 1933 and burned its library four days later on Berlin's Opernplatz (now Bebelplatz); the photographs became the emblematic images of Nazi book burning.
Q 06In what year did Dora Richter, the first known person to complete gender-affirming surgery, have her final operations?
1931
Dora Richter's vaginoplasty in 1931 completed a series of operations begun with an orchiectomy in 1922; long assumed killed in the 1933 raid on the institute, she was shown by 2023 research to have 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
Johnson's body was pulled from the Hudson River near the Christopher Street piers on 6 July 1992; police called it suicide, reclassified it as undetermined in 2002 and reopened the case in 2012.
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 12On what date is the Transgender Day of Remembrance observed each year?
November 20
Transgender Day of Remembrance is held each November 20; Gwendolyn Ann Smith began it in 1999 as a vigil growing out of her 'Remembering Our Dead' web project.
Q 13The Transgender Day of Remembrance memorialises Rita Hester, murdered in 1998 in which US state?
Massachusetts
Q 21In July 2016 Sarah McBride became the first openly transgender person to speak at what kind of event?
A national party convention
McBride addressed the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia on 28 July 2016, the first openly trans speaker at a national party convention; she was then national press secretary of the Human Rights Campaign.
Q 22Rachel Levine became the first openly transgender person to hold what rank in a US uniformed service?
Four-star officer
Levine was sworn in as a four-star admiral of the US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps on 19 October 2021, the first openly trans four-star officer in any US uniformed service; she had been Pennsylvania's health secretary.
Q 23In which state did Danica Roem win in 2017 as the first openly transgender US state legislator?
Rita Hester, a Black trans woman, was stabbed to death in her Allston apartment in Boston, Massachusetts, on 28 November 1998; the vigils held in her memory became the annual observance.
Q 14Activist Rachel Crandall Crocker, who created Transgender Day of Visibility in 2009, is from which US state?
Michigan
Crandall Crocker co-founded the group Transgender Michigan and launched the day from Michigan in 2009 to celebrate living trans people rather than only mourn the dead; Joe Biden first proclaimed it presidentially in 2021.
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 Orange Is the New Black actress was the first transgender person on the cover of Time, in June 2014?
Laverne Cox
Laverne Cox, who played Sophia Burset in Orange Is the New Black, fronted Time's 9 June 2014 issue headlined 'The Transgender Tipping Point'; in 2015 she got a Madame Tussauds wax figure.
Q 19Georgina Beyer, the world's first openly transgender MP in 1999, sat in which country's parliament?
New Zealand
Georgina Beyer won the Wairarapa seat for Labour in New Zealand's 1999 election, having already been the world's first openly trans mayor, of Carterton, from 1995.
Q 20Sarah McBride, the first openly trans member of Congress, won a 2024 seat in which state?
Delaware
She was already the first openly trans state senator in the country, elected in Delaware in 2020, before winning the US House seat in 2024.
Virginia
Roem won a Virginia House of Delegates seat in November 2017, the first openly trans person elected and seated in a US state legislature; a former journalist, she moved up to Virginia's Senate in 2023.
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 ruled in April 2014, in the NALSA judgment, that hijras and transgender people are a third gender with equal rights; Bangladesh's cabinet had recognised hijras the year before.
Q 27The Indigenous umbrella term "two-spirit" was adopted at a 1990 conference in which city?
Winnipeg
The term was adopted in 1990 at the third annual intertribal conference of Native American and First Nations LGBT people, held in Winnipeg, Manitoba, as an umbrella for those who fill traditional third-gender or gender-variant roles in their nations.
Q 28Fa'afafine, a recognised third gender, are part of the traditional culture of which Pacific islands?
Samoa
The word literally means 'in the manner of a woman', and fa'afafine work in every part of Samoan society, from caregiving to government.
Q 29Which term coined by Havelock Ellis is named for the 18th-century French spy who lived half his life 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.