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nenaveenstra's review against another edition
funny
informative
fast-paced
3.75
I can’t fault this book for doing exactly what it says on the tin; Kristy Loehr gives a very brief overview of what we know about queer women in history. However, in being so brief, she has made some questionable choices. The most important of which being that the queer women discussed in this book, are mostly lesbian women, or women who we would refer to as lesbians nowadays. Sure, bisexual and trans women are acknowledged in this book, and I appreciate that, but I wish they had gotten more page time.
I think this book tried to be funny, while also giving the reader names and titles for further reading, and I think it succeeded in that, and yet it leaves me feeling… unsatisfied. What I really wanted from this book was to gain new knowledge that I could tell all my queer friends the next time we meet up, but instead, I got homework. All of the information in this book was very surface-level, and with the humorous nature of this book, I wasn’t even sure if I could trust all of it.
That being said, I did enjoy this read, and I will lend it out to my friends who want to know more about queer history. Although this book might be surface-level, it sure does succeed in sparking the interest of the reader, and it functions as an excellent sample of all there is to learn. On top of that, I liked how aware it was of intersectionality, and that not just white/European-centered stories were portrayed. It was actually quite diverse!
Content Warnings
Moderate: Biphobia, Cursing, Hate crime, Homophobia, Misogyny, Sexism, Suicide, Transphobia, Religious bigotry, Suicide attempt, Murder, and Lesbophobia
Minor: Sexual content
Obviously, queer history is filled with a lot of trauma and grief. The content warnings above refer to that, as well as the writing style of the author - but I don't think this book itself is transphobic at all.ramreadsagain's review against another edition
funny
hopeful
informative
fast-paced
3.0
Lots of mixed feelings about this.
A lot of people in the reviews have spoken against the decision to refer to historical people as their assigned sex at birth (i.e. women) rather than what they may have identified as, calling this transphobic. While I largely agree that in the cases where these people lived life as men this book should have treated them as such, I do also believe that we should be very careful when applying modern gender terms to historical people. I attended an event where the author herself spoke about this, and stated that it was largely a decision imposed upon her by the publisher. She also touched upon the fact that lesbians and trans men have a massive shared history and that the lives of people who would today possibly identify as trans men are still incredibly important to talk about in the context of lesbian history.
That aside, the last third of this book was definitely the strongest part, as the lack of complete historical evidence for lesbians before that section meant that the author has padded out her writing with a lot of sass and sarcasm. I am a lover of sarcasm, but when every other sentence is a ‘witty’ comment, it gets old very quickly. For this reason I found a lot of this quite difficult to get through. Furthermore in several cases I couldn’t work out if the author was stating something that existed or was being sarcastic, as she didn’t actually include direct references to anything.
On to the good stuff though, this was still a great and snappy read and a very accessible starting point for those wishing to learn more about historical lesbians. There was a lot in here that I didn’t know about, a lot to laugh at and a lot of sapphic joy.
A lot of people in the reviews have spoken against the decision to refer to historical people as their assigned sex at birth (i.e. women) rather than what they may have identified as, calling this transphobic. While I largely agree that in the cases where these people lived life as men this book should have treated them as such, I do also believe that we should be very careful when applying modern gender terms to historical people. I attended an event where the author herself spoke about this, and stated that it was largely a decision imposed upon her by the publisher. She also touched upon the fact that lesbians and trans men have a massive shared history and that the lives of people who would today possibly identify as trans men are still incredibly important to talk about in the context of lesbian history.
That aside, the last third of this book was definitely the strongest part, as the lack of complete historical evidence for lesbians before that section meant that the author has padded out her writing with a lot of sass and sarcasm. I am a lover of sarcasm, but when every other sentence is a ‘witty’ comment, it gets old very quickly. For this reason I found a lot of this quite difficult to get through. Furthermore in several cases I couldn’t work out if the author was stating something that existed or was being sarcastic, as she didn’t actually include direct references to anything.
On to the good stuff though, this was still a great and snappy read and a very accessible starting point for those wishing to learn more about historical lesbians. There was a lot in here that I didn’t know about, a lot to laugh at and a lot of sapphic joy.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Homophobia and Sexual content
Moderate: Death, Racism, and War
Minor: Suicide and Terminal illness
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