Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender [Hardcover]

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.  Kit Heyamis a university lecturer, a queer history activist, and a trans awareness trainer who has worked with organizations across the United Kingdom. They live in Leeds, UK, with their partner Alex.  “[An] astute, self-aware and riveting study…Before We Were Transis a book that moves far beyond mere representation by managing to be both intellectually rigorous and exciting to read. It makes for a vital contribution to our understanding of gender variance and its place in social and political history, all around the world.”
 New York TImes Book Review“Heyam has assembled an inviting picture of trans, proto-trans, and trans-esque histories, from the king of Ndongo to the Public Universal Friend…a richly studied and trans-inclusive history.”