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nenaveenstra's review
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.