A review by nerdypotsie
50 Queers Who Changed the World: A Celebration of Lgbtq+ Icons by Dan Jones
2.0
As a member of the LGBTQ+ community who is considering majoring in LGBTQ+ studies in college, I had a strong interest in this book and I assumed that I would love it. However, this book was not as great as I hoped. It wasn't the worst book in the world and I learned a lot from it, but it needs a lot of revisions.
The introduction to this book started off rocky and I was worried about how the book was going to turn out. There were just some things that didn't sit right with me that I felt a queer or trans editor could've helped correct. It did get somewhat better at first. It was really informative and I was learning about important LGBTQ+ icons, but everything took a turn for the worse when Lili Elbe was mentioned. She was the first trans person mentioned in this book and she was deadnamed and was even called the gender of her birth in one sentence. It just got worse from there. Every trans person that has passed away was deadnamed in the book. I don't understand the author's motivation in including trans' people's deadnames in this book. No one needs to know a trans person's deadname. Deadnaming someone is incredibly rude and I would even say it's transphobic. I'm hoping that the author of this book just didn't understand why not to dead name trans people and that there wasn't any negative intent behind the author's word choice... A simple trans editor or proofreader could've helped correct the author so that dead names were not included in this book.
The only other thing worth noting was that this book claims to be "a celebration of LGBTQ+ icons" yet it doesn't encompass the wide range of identities in this community. As an asexual human with romantic attractions that I have yet to put a label on, I was sort of hoping for a wider range of LGBTQ+ identities to be included in this book.
I'm disappointed to say the least but if you truly want to learn about LGBTQ+ people who've changed history, this book will give you good information. Just please don't refer to trans people in the way that this book did.
The introduction to this book started off rocky and I was worried about how the book was going to turn out. There were just some things that didn't sit right with me that I felt a queer or trans editor could've helped correct. It did get somewhat better at first. It was really informative and I was learning about important LGBTQ+ icons, but everything took a turn for the worse when Lili Elbe was mentioned. She was the first trans person mentioned in this book and she was deadnamed and was even called the gender of her birth in one sentence. It just got worse from there. Every trans person that has passed away was deadnamed in the book. I don't understand the author's motivation in including trans' people's deadnames in this book. No one needs to know a trans person's deadname. Deadnaming someone is incredibly rude and I would even say it's transphobic. I'm hoping that the author of this book just didn't understand why not to dead name trans people and that there wasn't any negative intent behind the author's word choice... A simple trans editor or proofreader could've helped correct the author so that dead names were not included in this book.
The only other thing worth noting was that this book claims to be "a celebration of LGBTQ+ icons" yet it doesn't encompass the wide range of identities in this community. As an asexual human with romantic attractions that I have yet to put a label on, I was sort of hoping for a wider range of LGBTQ+ identities to be included in this book.
I'm disappointed to say the least but if you truly want to learn about LGBTQ+ people who've changed history, this book will give you good information. Just please don't refer to trans people in the way that this book did.