Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender
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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Community Reviews
Before We Were Trans is perhaps my favorite nonfiction I've read. Beyond the fascinating history of gender (and its intersections with sexuality) presented in the book, Kit Heyam makes compelling arguments for how we should approach trans history, and queer history generally.
The argument most commonly thrown back when a historical figure is speculated to have been transgender is that we can't possibly be sure how that person would have identified if they had the terms we have now, and that we're projecting our current understanding back onto the past. Heyam argues that these individuals are a part of trans history regardless of whether we can definitively call them trans, as they show the extraordinary breadth of gender expression and identity throughout history. To take just one example, we might not be able to know if all the AFAB individuals who lived as men in order to fight in the American Revolutionary War felt that they were just women disguised as men, or if they understood themselves as men, or something else entirely. But even not knowing that, their existence shows the diversity of gender expression and experience that have always existed in human life, and makes them a part of trans history. This understanding of trans history informs the stories and examples that the author highlights in the book, and gives them a chance to tell some fascinating, if not always clear-cut stories.
There are multiple arguments like the above that changed the way I think about approaching queer history, and how we understand identities of the past. I really got so much out of this book, and will be thinking about it for some time.
(Also, the author narrated the audiobook, and did a great job! Definitely worth picking up the audiobook if that's your jam.)
The argument most commonly thrown back when a historical figure is speculated to have been transgender is that we can't possibly be sure how that person would have identified if they had the terms we have now, and that we're projecting our current understanding back onto the past. Heyam argues that these individuals are a part of trans history regardless of whether we can definitively call them trans, as they show the extraordinary breadth of gender expression and identity throughout history. To take just one example, we might not be able to know if all the AFAB individuals who lived as men in order to fight in the American Revolutionary War felt that they were just women disguised as men, or if they understood themselves as men, or something else entirely. But even not knowing that, their existence shows the diversity of gender expression and experience that have always existed in human life, and makes them a part of trans history. This understanding of trans history informs the stories and examples that the author highlights in the book, and gives them a chance to tell some fascinating, if not always clear-cut stories.
There are multiple arguments like the above that changed the way I think about approaching queer history, and how we understand identities of the past. I really got so much out of this book, and will be thinking about it for some time.
(Also, the author narrated the audiobook, and did a great job! Definitely worth picking up the audiobook if that's your jam.)
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