Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender
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A groundbreaking global history of gender nonconformity
Today’s narratives about trans people tend to feature individuals with stable gender identities that fit neatly into the categories of male or female. Those stories, while important, fail to account for the complex realities of many trans people’s lives.
Before We Were Trans illuminates the stories of people across the globe, from antiquity to the present, whose experiences of gender have defied binary categories. Blending historical analysis with sharp cultural criticism, trans historian and activist Kit Heyam offers a new, radically inclusive trans history, chronicling expressions of trans experience that are often overlooked, like gender-nonconforming fashion and wartime stage performance. Before We Were Trans transports us from Renaissance Venice to seventeenth-century Angola, from Edo Japan to early America, and looks to the past to uncover new horizons for possible trans futures.
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I haven't read anything related to trans history before and don't know much about the topic, so this was both an interesting and eye opening read for me. The author discusses a new kind of methodology to look at the various kinds of gender expression in the past, when there was no language to describe these experiences, and how reading of these experiences through a more inclusive lens can lead to an expansive view of history. I also appreciated how the author talked about the intersection between trans history, intersex history, gender nonconformity and colonialism. Overall, this was both an academic text but also easily readable for a casual reader. However, this also feels more like an introductory book and I think anyone would definitely benefit from reading the various other texts the author refers to within these pages. The audiobook is also well narrated by the author, keeping me engaged throughout.
Trans history is rich and long, we've always existed in some form of another. This book gives clear examples of people in history who did not perform and/or identify with the gender they were assigned at birth, and how well or poorly they were accepted by their society and outside societies.
