A review by foxo_cube
A Short History of Queer Women by Kirsty Loehr
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
3.0
This book was alright, I suppose, but it was trying too hard to be funny and it's a bit obnoxious.
The cover is 10/10 and I think the people and topics that Loehr discusses are important - I'm definitely going to put some of the bibliography on my to-read list - but it's hard to take it seriously. It's not like history (or non-fiction in general) has to be written in a really dry or academic way, don't get me wrong, but it's just a bit... well, too much for me. The most bizarre "funny quip" was "Oh, the older relative! We've all been there. For me, it was a sexy great-aunt." Have we? Have we really all been there? Ending the book with "Right, I need to get laid." was also certainly a decision. Maybe I'm too asexual to understand and this is on me.
It's not a bad overview of the history of wlw, I don't think, and it's good to see something written about the people who are notoriously straight-washed or just ignored. There is a glaring lack of mention of trans lesbians, and a couple of people are included who it seems might not have been too fond of being included in the category of "women". Some acknowledgement of genderqueer, women-adjacent people is there, but generally only those who were AFAB. I don't believe the author is transphobic per se, but there's occasional hints of transphobic bias, if that makes any sense. The book does acknowledge that the terminology we have now is kind of hard to apply retrospectively to people who didn't have the same language with which to self-identify, which is very true, so I'll give it that. Still, I would have thought more gender theory-based stuff would be included in a book about queer women, you know?
I don't feel like this book was a waste of my time, but I don't know how highly I'd recommend it, either. There's some really fascinating pieces of history between the cringe, but I guess your mileage may vary!
The cover is 10/10 and I think the people and topics that Loehr discusses are important - I'm definitely going to put some of the bibliography on my to-read list - but it's hard to take it seriously. It's not like history (or non-fiction in general) has to be written in a really dry or academic way, don't get me wrong, but it's just a bit... well, too much for me. The most bizarre "funny quip" was "Oh, the older relative! We've all been there. For me, it was a sexy great-aunt." Have we? Have we really all been there? Ending the book with "Right, I need to get laid." was also certainly a decision. Maybe I'm too asexual to understand and this is on me.
It's not a bad overview of the history of wlw, I don't think, and it's good to see something written about the people who are notoriously straight-washed or just ignored. There is a glaring lack of mention of trans lesbians, and a couple of people are included who it seems might not have been too fond of being included in the category of "women". Some acknowledgement of genderqueer, women-adjacent people is there, but generally only those who were AFAB. I don't believe the author is transphobic per se, but there's occasional hints of transphobic bias, if that makes any sense. The book does acknowledge that the terminology we have now is kind of hard to apply retrospectively to people who didn't have the same language with which to self-identify, which is very true, so I'll give it that. Still, I would have thought more gender theory-based stuff would be included in a book about queer women, you know?
I don't feel like this book was a waste of my time, but I don't know how highly I'd recommend it, either. There's some really fascinating pieces of history between the cringe, but I guess your mileage may vary!
Content Warnings
Moderate: Sexual content, Lesbophobia, and Homophobia