#queerhistoria

[forislynx]

[…] if we write about histories where the categories of trans and intersex overlap, but just treat them as trans history without explicitly mentioning the word "intersex", we not only erase intersex history: we appropriate it.

Kit Heyam, Before We Were Trans : A New History of Gender

[forislynx]

The legacy of the idea of inversion meant that homosexuality and trans identity remained entangled for many years: sometimes it provided an excuse to deny trans people medical care on the basis that they were ‘really just gay’, other times it threw up barriers in the way of trans people whose transition wouldn’t ‘make them straight’ in the eyes of society. But ultimately, it equipped scientists, medics and politicians with the conceptual tools they needed to recognise that some people identified as […] a gender different from the one they were assigned at birth, and this could be seen as legitimate medical need rather than a moral failing. The history of inversion, then, is trans history as well as gay history – both because it framed sexuality as a form of gender identity, and because it was in some ways the precursor to the political rights and medical care that some trans people now have access to.

Kit Heyam, Before We Were Trans : A New History of Gender

[forislynx]

The fact is that the discipline of history is set up to erase queer lives, and particularly trans lives.

Kit Heyam, Before We Were Trans : A New History of Gender

[forislynx]

If historians start investigations of gender-nonconforming people by referring to them as "women dressed as men", this immediately closes off any possibility of trans history. Words and phrases like "transvestism" or "cross-dressing", which suggest disguise […] have the same effect. […] Consequently, if we’re not reminded that transness is a possible interpretation of a particular historical narrative, it’s unlikely that it will simply occur to us.

Kit Heyam, Before We Were Trans : A New History of Gender

[forislynx]

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

[forislynx]

Doing justice to these historical people means resisting the temptations to explain gender-nonconforming dress as motivated by factors unrelated to gender. It’s so easy, and so common, to rationalise gender-nonconforming dress as "just" something else: just fashion, just sex appeal, just something people did to gain economic opportunities. Thinking about the role of dress in trans history doesn’t mean doing away with those motivations – but it does mean embracing the multiple simultaneous motivations, meanings and possibilities that gender-nonconforming dress carried.

Kit Heyam, Before We Were Trans : A New History of Gender

[forislynx]

Expanding the scope of trans history doesn’t mean erasing the history of others: with any story, but especially with stories this messy, emotional connection to the past isn’t a zero-sum game.

Kit Heyam, Before We Were Trans : A New History of Gender

[forislynx]

In ancient times, Pan inspired a sort of rustic worship, with shrines and statues rather than temples, but it was in the late 19th century that he truly made his mark on contemporary culture. In the late 1890s, Western society was Pan-crazy. While Dracula, Frankenstein and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde explore the monsters that lurk within all men, academic Victor Imko points out this Victorian Pan reboot coincided with the emergence of gay male identity.

Dan Jones, Queer Heroes of Myth and Legend: A Celebration of Gay Gods, Sapphic Saints and Queerness Through the Ages