Before We Were Trans
by Jamie Dodger
Mentioned once across 1 show · first heard Jun 2026 on Digital Social Hour.
The general take
Nadège highlights "Before We Were Trans" as a valuable historical work that traces stories of gender-nonconforming figures throughout history and explains why modern terminology like "transgender" didn't exist to describe these people in earlier scholarship, using Hatshepsut as an example.
About
A “vital” ( New York Times Book Review ), groundbreaking global history of gender nonconformity Today’s narratives about trans people tend to feature individuals with stable gender identities that fit neatly into the categories of male or female. Those stories, while important, fail to account for the complex realities of many trans people’s lives. Before We Were Trans illuminates the stories of people across the globe, from antiquity to the present, whose experiences of gender have defied binary categories. Blending historical analysis with sharp cultural criticism, trans historian and activist Kit Heyam chronicles expressions of trans experience that are often left out of the historical record. Drawing on their own experience of transition and gender nonbinarism, Heyam reveals that what constitutes a man, a woman, or gender itself has continually been defined, contested, and redefined.
Who said what
- N
Nadège👍 Recommends
…historical book tracing transgender stories throughout history and ancient cultures
“There's a really great book called before we were trans. And it's this historian who traces back all of these stories and also explains why it was so easy for scholars to, again, transgender is a new term. So if we're thinking 30 years ago and you're studying history and you see Hatshepsut, the Pharaoh, for example, who's transing their gender, you don't even have the language or thought to be like, oh, this is a transgender story.”
Digital Social Hour — Why Desire Is Judged Differently For Men And Women... | Nadège | DSH #2005at 22:46
Listener reviews
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