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Book

Before we were trans : a new history of gender

Author

Kit Heyam

Call Number

  • 306.768 H6152 (CEN)

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Edition

First US edition.

Publication Information

New York : Seal Press, 2022.

Physical Description

viii, 343 pages ; 25 cm

Summary

Explores the history of transgender and gender nonconforming people, with a focus on those who identified in other than a straightforward binary fashion; on communities in West Africa, Asia, and among Native Americans; and on cross-dressing in World War I prison camps and in entertainment.

"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." --

Contents

  • Introduction: 'I had a gown on in a lark' : what is trans history?
  • Author's note: Writing trans history differently
  • 'The majesty of Him my daughter' : colonising gender roles in West Africa
  • 'She liked me in my greatcoat and hat' : fashion and trans panic in early modern Europe
  • 'I took especial pleasure in masquerade costumes' : living and performing as women in First World War internment camps
  • 'A feminine soul confined by a masculine body' : the entangled history of gay and trans experience
  • 'I am both man and woman' : defiant bodies in early America and beyond
  • 'Because of the manifestation of spirit' : gender, spirituality and survival in North America and South Asia
  • Epilogue: Now we are trans.

Subjects