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Reviews tagging 'Transphobia'

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

34 reviews

sophieprime's review against another edition

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challenging informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

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nilescrane's review against another edition

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5.0

I felt so grounded and at home in my transness when reading this.
Comfort, desperation, love: this is the emotional register in which I, too, experience trans and queer history. Like Shapland, I came to identification with the queer past before I came to full articulation of my queer present: I knew that I felt deep hurt and anger about past injustices against queer men, and deep emotional identification with them, long before I realised that was one aspect of my trans experience.... But it's through such indecorous emotion that history has provided me with some of the most intensely important experiences of my life.
Heyam reifies the watered down arguments I have in my head when I am met with the transphobic rhetoric of transness being a 'new fad'. My copy is tagged, dogearred, and annotated to the brim. I treasure this reading experience and I thank you, Dr. Heyam, for giving us hope in the form of history.
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templetoncecelia's review against another edition

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informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

5.0

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kkpwnall's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective fast-paced

5.0

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rachbake's review against another edition

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dark emotional informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

4.5

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warlocksarecool21's review against another edition

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hopeful informative reflective

4.5

Before We Were Trans is a brilliant book exploring trans history in an intersectional way. The author shows how the history of trans identities overlaps with history of intersex people, women, lesbians, non-western cultures & spirituality and how they were warped by colonization. Dr. Heyam does a wonderful job of explaining the nuances of how trans history is interconnected with all those things above and directly questions how interpretation of history can harm certain communities even if unintentionally. This book was really thought-provoking and even if you have a good understanding of intersectional theory regarding activism and feminism, I still recommend this book because of how detailed Dr. Heyam is and how well-researched his book is. The audiobook was narrated by the author and I really enjoyed it. Although it might be worth getting your hands on a physical copy or ebook to at least see the names of the historical figures and communities mentioned. 
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the_reading_wren's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

Fascinating, challenging and most of all comforting. 
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arrr's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective tense medium-paced

5.0

Thoughtful as historiography, interesting as trans and gender expansive history. Solid attempt at decolonial history accounting. Read the trigger warnings, it gets difficult at times. But the book is mostly affirming. 
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noomzoom's review against another edition

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emotional informative reflective slow-paced

4.0

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zombiezami's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.5

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