To anyone who accuses me of rereading the past from a perspective that’s biased toward finding trans history, I would say: 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 marginalised groups who are accused of lacking objectivity. While I’m keen not to constrain the possibilities of the past by fixing historical people in modern categories, I’m equally keen for us to remember that "cis man" and "cis woman" are modern categories as well. Making space for trans possibility, then, is no less objective than any other kinds of history: in fact, in many cases it might be more so.
Kit Heyam, Before We Were Trans : A New History of Gender
