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A review by torishams
Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender by Kit Heyam
This was a nuanced, complex look at how we can use history to affirm queer identities. Some sections were a bit more compelling than others for me, but there were some really interesting points, and I liked that there was a section devoted to discussing other cultural identities (and dispelling the widespread idea that Two-Spirit is the same as nonbinary). Here's some of my favorite points:
* when white people use the genders of people of color in this way, it recapitulates a colonialist dynamic of exploitation. the desire to name and categorize people according to Western metrics reflects and reenacts a similar colonialist impulse.
* For these scientists, sexual dimorphism was one of the things that divided people into different races: white people’s bodies were the most ‘perfectly’ divided into male and female, while people of color had fewer differences between the sexes. we can see the legacy of these racist ideas everywhere today: they’re behind the association of Black women with masculine-coded anger, and the feminization of Asian men.
* historical methodology - the way we’re accustomed to doing and thinking about history academically - tends to demand a much higher standard of evidence to ‘prove’ that someone in the past can be called trans than it does to ‘prove’ that they can be called cis. Because trans people are a minority, we’re seen as an aberration from the norm; our society treats cisgender-ness as the default, or ‘unmarked’ state of human beings… this approach also enables historians to avoid the horror of accidentally mislabelling a straight, cis person from the past as queer. As if, as a result, we mislabel a queer or trans person as straight or cis… well, funnily enough, that doesn’t cause as much anxiety. Our sense of what we need to be cautious about has been insidiously shaped by homophobia and transphobia.
* Trans people who write about our own history are often accused of bias… you’re absolutely right! But I would also say that I’m no less objective than any other historian. Because we live in a society that sees cis people as the default, the majority of histories are biased against finding trans history even when they try not to be. But funnily enough, it tends to only be marginalized groups who are accused of lacking objectivity.
* For the majority of trans writers, the most common genre in which we can get our voices heard is the memoir. The problem with this emphasis on testimony is not just that it demands trans people cede our right to privacy, exposing our vulnerabilities in order to prove that we deserve basic human rights; it’s that it creates an expectation of testimony.
* When we assert the realness of our identities, we’re not just trying to convince anti-trans campaigners that we deserve rights: in many cases, we’re also trying to reassure ourselves that our genders are real, in the face of a world that continually tries to undermine them.
* While in a sense everybody who writes a history book is rewriting history, in another sense it’s not possible to rewrite the past: it happened and nothing can change it. What is possible is to reread the past… What this doesn’t mean is ‘reclaiming’ people from the past as part of trans history… this capitalist language of ownership is part of the problem… thinking in this capitalist way also leads us to see historical representation as a scarce resource we need to fight over, rather than as something we can expand, reshape and share.
* Just because someone only lived as a gender different from the one they were assigned at birth for a short proportion of their life, then - such as living as male for a 6 year term in the army - we shouldn’t dismiss the validity of their short-lived trans experience. And we should call it trans experience…because regardless of what motivated them, the stories of people like the American Civil War soldiers show us that gender is malleable and has never been limited by birth assignment.
* We often think of dress as a costume: something that we put on over our internal self, which might reflect or obscure our true identity, but never reshape it… My own dress both reflects and reshapes my gender…
* As Sophie Labelle puts it, ‘every time you laugh at the idea of a man dressed as a woman, a trans girl gets more scared to come out.’
* this is the dangerous flipside of the “born this way” argument: it can lead us to think that trans identities are more valid, or only valid, if they have a proven biological cause.
* the idea of sexual dimorphism also has a racist history… as Richard von Krafft-Ebing put it, in a representative view, “the higher the anthropological development of the race, the stronger these contrasts between man and woman.”
* The simple precept of knowing people on their own terms can transform more than history; it also has the power to liberate us in the present.
* when white people use the genders of people of color in this way, it recapitulates a colonialist dynamic of exploitation. the desire to name and categorize people according to Western metrics reflects and reenacts a similar colonialist impulse.
* For these scientists, sexual dimorphism was one of the things that divided people into different races: white people’s bodies were the most ‘perfectly’ divided into male and female, while people of color had fewer differences between the sexes. we can see the legacy of these racist ideas everywhere today: they’re behind the association of Black women with masculine-coded anger, and the feminization of Asian men.
* historical methodology - the way we’re accustomed to doing and thinking about history academically - tends to demand a much higher standard of evidence to ‘prove’ that someone in the past can be called trans than it does to ‘prove’ that they can be called cis. Because trans people are a minority, we’re seen as an aberration from the norm; our society treats cisgender-ness as the default, or ‘unmarked’ state of human beings… this approach also enables historians to avoid the horror of accidentally mislabelling a straight, cis person from the past as queer. As if, as a result, we mislabel a queer or trans person as straight or cis… well, funnily enough, that doesn’t cause as much anxiety. Our sense of what we need to be cautious about has been insidiously shaped by homophobia and transphobia.
* Trans people who write about our own history are often accused of bias… you’re absolutely right! But I would also say that I’m no less objective than any other historian. Because we live in a society that sees cis people as the default, the majority of histories are biased against finding trans history even when they try not to be. But funnily enough, it tends to only be marginalized groups who are accused of lacking objectivity.
* For the majority of trans writers, the most common genre in which we can get our voices heard is the memoir. The problem with this emphasis on testimony is not just that it demands trans people cede our right to privacy, exposing our vulnerabilities in order to prove that we deserve basic human rights; it’s that it creates an expectation of testimony.
* When we assert the realness of our identities, we’re not just trying to convince anti-trans campaigners that we deserve rights: in many cases, we’re also trying to reassure ourselves that our genders are real, in the face of a world that continually tries to undermine them.
* While in a sense everybody who writes a history book is rewriting history, in another sense it’s not possible to rewrite the past: it happened and nothing can change it. What is possible is to reread the past… What this doesn’t mean is ‘reclaiming’ people from the past as part of trans history… this capitalist language of ownership is part of the problem… thinking in this capitalist way also leads us to see historical representation as a scarce resource we need to fight over, rather than as something we can expand, reshape and share.
* Just because someone only lived as a gender different from the one they were assigned at birth for a short proportion of their life, then - such as living as male for a 6 year term in the army - we shouldn’t dismiss the validity of their short-lived trans experience. And we should call it trans experience…because regardless of what motivated them, the stories of people like the American Civil War soldiers show us that gender is malleable and has never been limited by birth assignment.
* We often think of dress as a costume: something that we put on over our internal self, which might reflect or obscure our true identity, but never reshape it… My own dress both reflects and reshapes my gender…
* As Sophie Labelle puts it, ‘every time you laugh at the idea of a man dressed as a woman, a trans girl gets more scared to come out.’
* this is the dangerous flipside of the “born this way” argument: it can lead us to think that trans identities are more valid, or only valid, if they have a proven biological cause.
* the idea of sexual dimorphism also has a racist history… as Richard von Krafft-Ebing put it, in a representative view, “the higher the anthropological development of the race, the stronger these contrasts between man and woman.”
* The simple precept of knowing people on their own terms can transform more than history; it also has the power to liberate us in the present.