​At this party in early December, a law professor from Queen’s University suggests he take a different tactic for performing gay marriages; reading the banns. An ancient Christian tradition dating back to Charlamagne, reading the banns involved reading out the names of those getting married and seeking any legal objections to the marriage. The Ontario Marriage Act allowed for churches to read the banns, but it said nothing about the genders of the couple. According to the Act, as long as there were no objections to the marriage, any two people could be married without needing a marriage certificate from the Province. Importantly, it wasn’t just any objections, they had to specifically be if one partner was under the legal age, had been married previously without obtaining a divorce, or if the two are related. Homophobic objections did not count. After those three weeks, the marriage could go through and the pastor could provide a marriage license. In this way, reading the banns offered a legal loophole to provide gay couples full, legal marriages.
 
Rev. Hawkes liked the idea, and he quickly found two couples, Anne and Elaine Vautour and Joe Varnell and Kevin Bourassa. Even before he starts reading the banns, it is in the newspapers. He announced his plan to the church on Dec 3rd, and by Dec 7th, there had already been multiple stories in the Toronto Star. On the 12th, two days after Rev. Hawkes read the banns for the first time, the Ontario government announced that it will not recognize the marriages. It has become front page news. Discourse abounds, with editorials waxing rhetorically both for and against. It becomes a sensation. This, of course, was Rev. Hawkes’ goal. It was intended to force the government’s hand and to recognize gay couples.
 
By the end of December, the date is set; January 14th, 2001. 
​

But it isn’t fully legal yet. The Province of Ontario had already stated they would not recognize the marriages. But Rev. Hawkes still sent the marriage license to be recognized. When it was rejected, that’s where the fight began. Despite the rejection, Rev. Hawkes was very clear. It did not change or affect the couples – they were still legally married. ​

On Jan 20th, the MCCT filed a lawsuit with the Registrar General of Ontario. In it, the church claimed that the Charter rights of both the couples and the Church were being infringed. In rejecting the marriages, the couples were being sexually discriminated against, and the Church was being denied its religious freedoms.
 
The case would be heard, and the couples won. But not entirely. In the initial victory saw no immediate changes. Their rights were infringed, but it gave a few years for the governments to rectify their laws. This was not sufficient for Rev. Hawkes, who appealed to the Ontario Court of Appeals.
 
On June 10th, 2003, the Ontario Court of Appeals gave their ruling. In a unanimous decision, they found that the Charter rights were being infringed, but this time, it stuck. They declared that existing marriage laws were in violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman was immediately struck down.
 
As of that moment, gay marriage was legal in Ontario. The first jurisdiction in North America to recognize same-sex marriage.
 
Ontario would not remain the sole jurisdiction, however. Across the country, gay activists and gay friendly churches saw what Rev. Hawkes was doing and decided to do the same. British Colombia would be the first to join Ontario in July of the same year. Other provinces would follow suit in 2004 and by 2005, the Federal government passed the Civil Marriage Act, bringing gay marriage to the rest of the country.

It is a shame that there are not more books on Jim Egan’s life. Luckily, there is Jim’s 1998 autobiography, Challenging the Conspiracy of Silence, written by Jim and edited by Donald McLeod. Despite its short length at only just over 100 pages, it provides a first hand glimpse into a gay world the predates gay rights. Filled with anecdotes and recollections, Jim tells his life from a kid growing up in working class Toronto in the 1920s and 30s to being gay in the Merchant Navy during and after WWII, and finally his activism in the 1950s and 60s. Stories litter each page, from discovering Piccadilly Circus while stationed in London during the war to the fabulous friends within Toronto’s nascent gay world.
​
Jim was unique for his time. Even from an early age, he knew he was gay, but he never had any qualms about that. He never felt ashamed, instead imagining that if he felt that way, there must be others that were similar. For him, harkening the slogan of the post-Stonewall era, Gay was Good. That prescience comes through in the writing, sounding more in place with gay liberation rather than post-war Toronto. 

​It was that mentality that pushed Jim to start being more active. At the time, gay people were being written about in the newspapers and the tabloids, but their voices were often excluded from these stories. Headlines like “Pansies bloom in cocktail bar” and “Toronto man described as abnormal love mate” were common, peddling sensational stories about the gay community. In response, Jim started writing letters to the editors of these papers, decrying how they demonized the gay community. In the early 1950s, he had dozens of letters printed in the likes of the Globe & Mail and True News Times before writing a column for Justice Weekly in 1953.
 
He would put his activism on hiatus between 1954 and 1959, during which time Jim and his long-time partner Jack Nesbitt focused on other activities. This hiatus would not last, as Jim returned to writing letters as the decade came to a close. During this time, Jim worked with the famed journalist Sidney Katz for his landmark article on homosexuality in 1964. 

Jim’s energy and enthusiasm never quite caught on with the rest of the gay community, however. People appreciated the work he did defending homosexuals, but they would shun the idea of writing that same support to the newspaper editors. They liked the work, but never found the inspiration to continue it. Gay liberation would not catch on in Toronto for a few more years, but by that point, Jim and Jack had moved away.

Challenging the Conspiracy of Silence is mostly concerned with this period of Jim’s activism, when he was writing letters to stand up for homosexuals in Canada. This is felt most strongly in the prose; while much of the book is written from Jim’s perspective with stories told in the first person, everything after their move in 1964 in the afterword was written by Don McLeod. This is perhaps for the best, as it includes one of the most complicated and nuanced part of Jim and Jack’s story; their Supreme Court challenge.

In the late 1980s, Jim and Jack claimed that they were being discriminated against because they were being refused spousal benefits under the old age pension scheme. Despite the fact that they would eventually lose their case before the Supreme Court of Canada, it would still prove to be a watershed moment for gay activism in Canada. As a result of the case, sexual orientation was read into the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, opening the door for future challenges including the one that led to the legalization of gay marriage in the 2000s. By reflecting on the court case through the omniscient voice of the historian, McLeod is able to emphasize the Jim and Jack’s impact on future gay rights in Canada.

My biggest issue with the book is not really with anything on its pages, but instead its availability. Sure, there are moments that could be more cognizant of his privilege, but I think that largely misses the forest for the trees. Instead, I am more concerned with the fact that the only seemingly legitimate books on Jim’s activism are this one, long since out of print, and a picture book intended for ages 6-10. The Toronto Public Library, where Jim’s activism was felt most strongly, only has the latter in their collection. I was fortunate to find my copy at Glad Day Bookshop for only $15; used copies go for over $50 on Thriftbooks and over $100 on Amazon. While Jim has been immortalized in a Heritage Minute, it is a tragedy that the Canadian public does not have more access to his story. He was Canada’s first gay activist, and yet he is not celebrated as much. I can only hope for more in the future.

​In some ways, this shift has been beneficial for museums. By giving up the limelight, museums have been able to engage in a far wider breadth of conversations. Museums are grappling with the underexplored and oft-repressed narratives that have historically been excluded from the field. At NEMA, rooms were packed for talks on decolonization, racism, and other attempts to reassess the past. I consider my work to be part of that progressive push, seeking to show how the museum field can do better by its transgender visitors and employees. I strongly believe that this work would not have been possible had museums been the target of a widespread Conservative culture war, but we will not be spared forever. It is only a matter of time before our industry finds itself in the crosshairs. We must prepare accordingly.
 
For many months now, I have been researching one of the battles from the 1990s culture war; the 1990 Robert Mapplethorpe exhibit, The Perfect Moment. A retrospective show composed of 175 photographs, The Perfect Moment garnered controversy when it arrived in Washington, D.C. It, along with other provocative artworks like Serrano’s Piss Christ, kicked off a heated debate in which almost killed the National Endowment for the Arts. This is, in essence, how The Perfect Moment is remembered today; a battle between politicians like Jesse Helms for the lifeblood of museum funding.
 
But this is not where my focus has been. For as well known as the battle over the NEA is, I do not believe it is the pinnacle of that culture war. For that, the field must turn its attention away from Washington D.C. and towards Cincinnati.
 
In 1990, Cincinnati was a bastion of Conservative politics. As the home of many lobbying groups, it was the centre of anti-pornography campaigns. And it was at Cincinnati’s Contemporary Arts Center that The Perfect Moment was about to be displayed. When the CAC had accepted the show, it had not yet entered the spotlight but once it had, the museum began getting harassed. Despite taking precautions to try to soothe some of the outrage, such as separating the most contentious photographs in a separate room and forbidding children from visiting the exhibition, the police still arrived on the first day, shutting down the exhibit and charging the museum’s director with pandering obscenity. This was the only time in the US that a director of museum has been charged and stood trial for the art they displayed on their walls. And it is treated as a footnote in the story of the Mapplethorpe exhibition. 

This is just a brief overview of The Perfect Moment. There is much more to be written about the exhibit and what lessons can be learned from it. I started researching it because I found echoes between it and the current right-wing culture wars. The anti-trans movement that the Trump campaign picked up and amplified reflects the deeply homophobic attacks against the Mapplethorpe exhibit. It was only a matter of time before it became relevant for our field again.
 
And at the heart of The Perfect Moment, I see the dire error the field makes when it reflects on previous culture wars; it focuses on a top-down hierarchy, on what the politicians at the very top are doing. The NEA gets the focus, while a man almost had his life ruined, almost served jail time, because that culture war turned its attention towards him. The funding arms are important, but so too are the lives of the people working at these institutions. Social media based culture wars are highly decentralized and will not wait for a politician to give the word before sending death and bomb threats. 

I get the sense that museums are not prepared for what this may look like. In a talk on the final day of the conference, one panel discussed their role in social activism and advocacy, especially as it pertained to immigration. When asked if they plan to take a harder or softer voice as a result of the election, they seemingly did not feel a change was necessary even though they work closely with one of the groups most often scapegoated by the incoming administration. For an institution that prides itself on social advocacy, it felt hollow to not rise to the occasion to try to combat the upcoming wave of hate. Granted, this was only a few days after the election, and conferences are not necessarily an easy place to come to terms with a starkly different future, so their policy may change with further considerations.
 
Everyone is still processing what the election means for the future. This is just another way of trying to make sense of what is to come. The NEMA conference made me realize that the research I had been doing was more important than ever. The invaluable conversations I got to be a part of helped to form some understanding of the years to come. For now, we find ourselves on a collision course. Our field has taken on a distinctly progressive slant that seeks to elevate and highlight underrepresented stories from marginalized groups. Meanwhile, we are up against a movement that is incredibly hostile to anything they consider DEI, queer or vaguely progressive. A clash will happen. And with plans already underway for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence fast approaching, the question is not when but who will be the first under attack. Anyone who has ever discussed the Enola Gay in a museum context should already be well aware of what that will look like.  

​This has stuck with me, and I have come to see it as an instance where “admitting uncertainty” can still inscribe the status quo. For those unfamiliar with the concept, admitting uncertainty is a writing technique that allows museums to “engage the visitor in the debate that might exist about an object.” (Trench, 20). When a site admits uncertainty, when they declare that they do not know, they seek to invite visitors to form their own conclusions about the object on display. But this is not always as neutral as it might appear. Labels are often very short, and techniques like admitting uncertainty can be used as a shortcut to suggest that there are larger debates surrounding a work or artist. The issue arises when the audience is not given the tools to engage in this debate. When used to discuss queer possibility, admitting uncertainty often becomes a way to gesture at progressive interpretation without actually engaging with it. It becomes a form of covert censorship.

​Trevor Fairbrother has been one of the leading Sargent scholars to suggest that the artist was queer. After Sargent’s death, many of letters were destroyed by his sisters, leaving a dearth of insight into his personal life. In 1981, Fairbrother argued that, when faced with this lack of evidence, Sargent’s private sketches should inform how we see view his sexuality. One album of sketches, held by the Fogg Museum at Harvard University, is key to providing the necessary glimpses into Sargent’s private life. This collection, which had never been exhibited during Sargent’s life, is a distinctly homoerotic series of male nudes in various poses. While Fairbrother acknowledges that some of the sketches in the album are “academic” (Fairbrother 1981, 72) in their poses, I can see many of them fitting right in with gay men’s beefcake magazines of the 1950s. This album and the nude sketches within would become the basis of Fairbrother’s exhibition in 2000 that sought to draw attention to the homoeroticism that underlays much of Sargent’s nudes, including McKeller’s. 

​This queerness could be felt even by those less familiar with Sargent’s work, as shown in an interview Fairbrother did with the openly gay Andy Warhol. In 1986, Fairbrother took Warhol on a tour of the Sargent exhibit at the Whitney Museum. Throughout the tour, Warhol made many sly, witty comments that alluded to more, alluded to a kind of queer recognition. For example, when Warhol finds out that Sargent and Oscar Wilde were friends, he asks whether they were “those kinds of friends,” to which Fairbrother responds “who knows.” The exchange ends with Warhol stating simply, “oh.” (Fairbrother 1987, 65). In another conversation about Sargent’s nude sketches, Warhol’s bodyguard describes states that he “thinks [Sargent] liked the guys” right before Warhol compares Sargent’s depiction of Hell for the Boston Public Library to a “gang-bang.” (Fairbrother 1987, 68). 

​In my opinion, the most telling comment that Warhol makes is in reference to the destruction of Sargent’s letters. When Fairbrother mentions that his sisters destroyed his letters, Warhol asks “oh, you mean they were hot?” (Fairbrother 1987, 69). This reflects a queer kind of knowledge, a familiarity with queer lives and queer history. When Warhol is confronted by the destruction of evidence, he understands and recognizes that as evidence itself, rather than a lack of it. Destruction of personal correspondences is common within queer history, so Warhol reads it as a confirmation of Sargent’s “secret”.  This is a prime example of what museum designer Margaret Middleton describes as queer possibility, wherein we “value queer experience as expertise and gaydar as epistemology.” (Middleton, 433).
 
When compared to Warhol’s perspective of Sargent, the McKeller nude’s label clearly lacks this kind of queer imagination. The label seemingly wants to address the questions that surround Sargent’s sexuality, but it is hesitant to actually leave the possibility open. The relationship is portrayed as transactional, that between an artist and his muse. Whereas Fairbrother provided Warhol with the space to explore the idea of Sargent’s homosexuality from the margins, the MFA label resists it by limiting the discussion to slight references occurring elsewhere. In this way, the traditional, heterosexual view of Sargent can be reinscribed and reinforced.
 
These kinds of issues are important to keep in mind when writing about possibly queer people in museums. Unacknowledged biases can slip in very easily and undermine the intended message, especially when speaking about communities that have had their existences erased over time. Admitting uncertainty is a great technique when used intentionally, but the writer’s point of view must be taken into account first so as to not further isolate queer readings. Otherwise, we end up in situations where someone’s sexuality is only questioned, rather than acknowledged.

​Failing, Patricia. “The Hidden Sargent.” ARTnews, May 1, 2001.
Fairbrother, Trevor. “A Private Album: John Singer Sargent’s Drawings of Nude Male Models.” Arts Magazine 56 (December 1981): 70-79.
Fairbrother, Trevor. “Warhol Meets Sargent at Whitney.” Arts Magazine 61 (February 1987): 64-71.
Middleton, Margaret. “Queer Possibility.” Journal of Museum Education 45, no. 4 (2020): 426-436.

​The best case study I have found on composite histories comes from a dissertation by Elissa J. Sampson on the history of the Tenement Museum in New York City. This dissertation made my understanding of these interpretive elements significantly easier, by this dissertation and I will reference it throughout this post.
 
But what is a composite history? It’s much like the interpretation version of historical fiction; built upon the real facts and histories is a new story that can be far more expansive. Between 1987 and 1993, the Tenement Museum played with the idea of creating composite histories of the families to tell the history of immigrants in New York’s Lower East Side. While the museum did not fully use composite histories in their final interpretation, the case study offers a glimpse at an alternative that can create opportunities for stories that are not so rigidly tied to place.
 
The Tenement Museum saw itself as representative of the larger Lower East Side, and as such wanted to tell a history that was as expansive as the area. To tell this history, the museum hired historians to create profiles for the various families that would make up the residents of the tenement. Through these composite families, the museum could tell the social history of the neighbourhood’s residents throughout history. A Free Black family would live in one apartment set in 1850, another apartment would house a mixed household of Chinese bachelors from 1900 who worked in a local laundromat. In addition, each household would have some sort of family drama unfolding in order to explore more social issues. An early memo from one of the founders explores this dynamic:

​By unshackling the interpretation from the real lives of those that lived in the apartments, the creators could present a vertical slice of life in the area. This familial composition might not have existed in full, but elements of them were present in many very real families. The tensions that arise from the imagined conflicts allow for explorations of real life events and the ways that various family members responded to them.
 
For as open ended as the composite histories were, it was not without its critics A conflict was emerging. On one side was the goal to represent the communities that formed the immigrant histories of the Lower East Side. On the other was the urge to interpret the lives of the people that had actually lived in the building that the museum had occupied. The plan to use composite histories was first imagined before the museum had acquired a building, allowing for more creativity in the stories they could tell. But once the museum found its home, the focus began to shift towards the verifiable lives that had lived within the building itself. This was deemed to be a more “authentic” experience for those visiting the museum.
 
This conflict played out over a number of years, with the Tenement Museum switching plans a couple of times. In the end, the museum struck a sort of middle ground, where the recreated apartments would interpret the lives of their actual tenants while walking tours and other programs would continue to imagine the larger community. This would prove flawed for the apartments, as the lived history of the building was far less diverse than the founders had expected, leading to less diversity than they had envisioned. Households like the Free Black family or the Chinese mixed bachelors were jettisoned since there was no evidence that either group had lived in the building.
 
It should come as no surprise to longtime readers that I find claims around “authenticity” to be somewhat dubious. Within queer and trans history, authenticity and verifiability are often smokescreens for homophobic and transphobic exclusion. Even people who live their whole lives as a different gender from the one they were assigned at birth are refused their trans identity after they are outted. As a result, I find such rigorous adherence to these concepts to be a flawed endeavour.
 
Furthermore, in sites like the Tenement Museum, the authenticity is just as constructed as if they had used composite histories. As Pete Brown describes in Telling the Truth in Historic Houses: How Substitutes Can Be Authentic, many historic sites style themselves as being a “genuine glimpse into the past” (95) despite this rarely being the case. At the Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet where Brown worked, it was presented as though everything on display was original, that it was authentic to the previous owners. This was not true as the staff “had trawled antique dealers and secondhand shops for suitable items” in order to populate the rooms. The displays were constructed to create the illusion of timelessness, created by people who had done their research.
 
Why do we view this constructed authenticity, where the construction is hidden from the audience, to be innately more authentic than composite histories? Even when the Tenement Museum chose to use the “authentic” stories of those that lived in their building, it was only to a certain extent. Despite a focus on the real people that lived there, these families were not being interpreted in the rooms or even on the same floors in which they lived. This might seem like a minor point, but the décor tells a story. As Sampson points out, one of the families lived in the back of the tenement, whereas at the Tenement Museum, they now had “a front parlor window to provide light for her dressmaking business”. (Sampson, 136)
 
Not even the people who lived in the building were exempt from being constructed as the founders made assumptions about them as well. What little information existed for the historical residents led to informed guesses on how these families lived their lives. If the Tenement Museum was going to invent histories for its past residents, what benefit is there to basing it off the real lives of those that existed? The end result is the same, there is still a constructed view of history, but composite histories lack the limitations of historical record.
 
When Brown was confronted with the constructed authenticity of the Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet, him and his team decided to make that construction part of the interpretation. Some feared that this would ruin the magic for visitors, but this was not the case. Instead, visitors found new ways to interact with the rooms. They were just as interested to learn about the spaces. If making the constructed nature of the set dressing did not interfere with the visitor experience, there is no reason to assume that something like composite histories cannot succeed as well.
 
This is why I see composite histories as a solution to the lack of queer or trans history. A similar tension exists for queer and trans interpretation as it did for the Tenement Museum. The dearth of verifiable evidence of the lives of the past requires alternatives. We know queer and trans people existed throughout history, but they have often been marginalized and pushed to the edges of society. The stories we have are rare, relying on evidence to not have been destroyed by either that person’s family or themselves. Further, many of the stories of historic trans people are only known because they were traumatically outted either during their lifetime or after they had died.
 
Through composite histories, it is possible to imagine the people who visited the sites we interpret. By using the same research that would go into any sort of interpretive program, it would be possible to tell an inclusive history. Studying the lives of the trans people that we know existed, for whom records survive, allows us to imagine the anonymous trans people that were never violently outted against their wishes.
These stories do not need to be utilized to the same extent as the Tenement Museum intended, but glimpses into queer and trans lives could be integrated into larger narratives through small vignettes.
 
The question of how to interpret that which does not exist is one that can never have a definite answer. Most queer interpretation case studies focus on the stories that already exist and elevating them, but not all sites are so fortunate to have those. This is why composite histories can be so powerful; they are not tied to the specific geographic place. They do not need to replace the existing stories, but they can be used as an alternative. By being up front with visitors on the composite nature of these stories, it should not detract from the history itself.

The first major issue I have is with how vague the document is. The document is titled Interpreting Transgender Stories and yet transgender stories seem almost tertiary. Only about half-way through on page 10 on does it start discussing specifics to transgender stories, such as terminology and trans history. Everything before that surrounds getting the project off the ground. While a fair topic to explore, the advice given tends to boil down to the generic. Advice such as “know your organization’s structure” that should already be familiar to anyone that is looking to develop a project for their institution, no matter the subject.
​
While there are nuggets of good and/or decent information in there, such as to avoid deadnaming trans people, these come across somewhat basic. Take the section on deadnaming, for example. In it, the authors recommend not deadnaming, but suggest that it might be difficult for historical subjects. Here, the institutional transphobia of the archive is overlooked for the sake of ease. Changing the system to remove deadnames is seen more as an option, an addendum on the end, rather than a recommendation to better reflect transgender lives in general. 

​Compare that to the response that the curators at the Schwules Museum received to the use of Suleika Aldini’s deadname in their exhibition Unboxed: Transgender In A Gay Museum. It is not hard to imagine that the curators’ thought process was similar to that of the AAM’s. This was a circus performer, someone who would have used multiple names, and finding out more might be made easier if they included her birth name. The response from the community was negative, drawing some of the most feedback that they received. This feedback would inspire the museum to change the name of the collection to not use Aldini’s birth name.

In general, I wish the AAM chose to be a bit more direct and radical with its advice. With so much of the document being about planning of projects, it is more than a little disappointing that institutional transphobia is not discussed more. It seems somewhat naïve to believe that, in the midst of a culture war targeting trans people, an obstinate board member could be convinced by case studies or a community member. The fact that this document does not provide any clear recommendations on how to respond to such transphobia makes its value at a time such as this questionable at best.

My second major issue comes down to the way that the transgender community is imagined in these projects. The document discusses bringing the community in, working with the community, but this relationship does not feel equal. It feels extractive. The community exists almost as a rubber stamp, where the museum does the work and the community approves it. The museum is still the arbiter of all the decisions, the arbiter of taste. Community support is meant to give it validity, but there is little to suggest that the community is supposed to get anything out of these programs beyond “a community gathering space” (AAM, 5). The document does not even mention compensating community members for their time.

Ideally, this process would be far more collaborative. Rather than going into it with these grand ideas of what the museum can provide the community, let the community tell the museum what they want. Involve the community in every step of the way, especially in the very earliest stages of planning, so that it reflects their needs and wants. Their voice needs to be central, rather than the museum translating for the community. If inviting a trans person to speak to your board, make sure they are paid the same as any consultant. Transgender people are the experts in our lives, and we deserve to be treated as such.

This can be used in very beneficial ways. One prime example is with the scarcity of historical records. As the document describes, finding examples throughout history can prove very challenging. Finding ways to get around this is a much larger problem, but one excellent solution is to open the collection up to a local transgender community and let them make their own connections with the past. What resonates with them? What stories do they have that speak to the collections at the museum? And how can the museum facilitate these conversations with the past? It does not need to just be through guest curators coming in, but can be everyday trans people. Only by relinquishing some of its power can the museum truly work with a community on equal footing. In this way, we might finally be able to see, as Margaret Middleton so eloquently put it, “queer experience as expertise and gaydar as epistemology.” (Middleton, 433.)

My last major is with what I found to be missing from the document. Firstly, the lack of a discussion around external pushback to a transgender centric program. There is a small part about expecting to get pushback, but the document “both sides” the issue by suggesting that negative responses will be coming from “both those disinterested in transgender identity entirely and those deeply invested.” (AAM, 18) Honestly, this deserves an entire section on its own. While Interpreting Transgender Stories only came out in October and the scale of the current culture war exploded since the start of the year, negative responses to transgender visibility was still on the rise when it did come out. There is no excuse for the lack of discussion here. 

What happens if your institution is made the subject of a weeks long news cycle on Fox News? If protests start occurring over your transgender programs? Is your institution prepared to stand by your front of house employees when they get accosted by angry right-wingers? Are you prepared to receive bomb and death threats over this? These may seem extreme, but that was the response that Target and Bud Light received after their support of queer and trans people. Your institution is likely smaller than these two, but that does not mean that your institution will escape the ire of the right-wing hate machine. It is only a matter of time until the culture war comes for the museum.

​The second aspect I find to be missing is the transgender museum scholarship. A look through the bibliography and recommended reading leaves much to be desired. The list includes many citations that I recognize, but I found incredibly disappointing for how little they discussed transgender topics on their own. Many approach transgender topics as a member of the LGBTQ+, and as such, reading them feels as though trans perspectives are just not actually considered. Looking at this list, you would have no idea that there are as many transgender museum professionals as there are. See my Annotated Bibliography if you are searching for a better entry into transgender museums.

The last piece that I find missing is quite simply, what are transgender people supposed to get out of transgender programs? I frequently argue that transgender exhibits should target transgender people, but I think it bares repeating in this context. If the goal is to provide a community gathering space, an exhibition or program should do more than just reflect trans lived experiences; it should say something to those trans people you are trying to attract. Why should they bother coming in the first place if all you are going to do is repeat what they already know right back to them, but in words that do not speak to them?
 
There was one part where this really stood out to me. On page 12, in the section “Exploring Transgender Histories & Narratives In Your Institution,” the document suggests to tell trans history because “transgender identities present the opportunity to explore [gender] as a dynamic, ever-changing form of social categorization. What does it mean to be a man or a woman?” (AAM, 12) This is a problematic way of approaching anything related to transgender people because it only cares about us so far as we can inform them about the ways that cisgender people move through the world. This is what Julia Serano referred to as “ungendering”, “where gender-variant people are used as a device to bring conventional notions about maleness and femaleness into question.” (Serano, 195-196) Trans people and our history are just presented as a tool to unravel cisgender understandings of sex and gender. If our presence is just a metaphor, what is there for us to latch onto? We are not allowed our humanity if we are only ever presented as research subjects.
 
Rather than looking at trans history as a lens to view gender as a whole, consider what a trans person would respond to. There is a line in the November 2018 volume of Transgender Studies Quarterly that greatly influenced my perspective on trans history, and I believe it would make an excellent starting point. In “Trans, Time, and History,” authors Leah DeVun and Zeb Tortorici say that “history often lends legitimacy to a community’s claim that it belongs in the here and now.” (DeVun and Tortorici, 521) By finding echoes of oneself in the past, it is possible to imagine a future where you get to exist. There is an incredible power in that. Kit Heyam takes this idea further in Before We Were Trans where they show how this is in contrast to the ways that anti-trans activists will claim that trans people are new and therefore not real. (Heyam, 22-23) By allowing trans people to see themselves in the past, by giving them a history that they can connect to, they might start feeling a little less alone. By centring a transgender audience like this, we can do a far better job at actually reaching these communities instead of speaking over them.
 
All of these leaves me wondering; who exactly is this document for? It does not provide solid enough discussions on the nuances of interpreting transgender stories to really benefit the average museum professional. The language used suggests it isn’t for transgender professionals looking for supports. Those looking for what has been written on trans topics in museums will be fairly disappointed by the selection. Everything in it feels either too vague or too generic to be of any real use for creating a transgender program or exhibition. I wish I had more positive things to say about it, but I find myself walking away just scratching my head.

American Alliance of Museums. Interpreting Transgender Stories in Museums and Cultural Heritage Institutions. 2022.

DeVun, Leah and Zeb Tortorici. “Trans, Time, and History.” Transgender Studies Quarterly Vol. 5, No. 4 (Nov. 2018): 518-539.

Felten, Sebastian and Rebecca Kahn. “Unboxed: Transgender in a Gay Museum? A Field Report by the Curators.” Transgender Studies Quarterly Vol. 8, No. 2 (May 2021): 257-264.

Heyam, Kit. Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender. London: Basic Books, 2022.

Middleton, Margaret. “Queer Possibility.” Journal of Museum Education 45:4 (2020): 426-436.
​
Serano, Julia. “Ungendering in Art and Academia.” In Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity. Berkeley: Seal Press, 2016: 195-212.

The most useful (and relevant for this conversation) information comes about a third of the way through the zine. On page 11, Mascara and Hope describes what one’s first gender clinic appointment would look like and what to expect from it, namely disappointment. Trans women are not going to get hormones after one appointment, the authors emphasize, and the first appointment is not going to achieve much. Their presentation will be judged on whether it is sufficiently feminine or not and they will be asked unnecessary questions. In response, the authors recommend dodging the usual questions around topics like sexuality and mental health in order to “[not] give them reasons to delay [hormones].” The advice is to hide the red flags and confront them through one’s support group because these issues will only hinder further progress. ​

What develops out of this and the following pages is a narrative to follow. Trans women should be on guard when dealing with these gatekeepers. Keep personal details close to one’s chest and do not reveal anything that might delay the already painstaking process even more. The relationship is an adversarial one; the clinic and their employees do not exist to help trans people but to weed out those they deem to be “fake” trans people. As such, trans people must know the game when going in and be ready to play when they walk in. They are the gatekeepers, and giving them what they want to see and hear will help in the long run, even if it is counter to one’s own perception of themselves.
 
Here in Toronto, though, we have a different clinic system. And in the history of that, the Clarke looms large.
 
I am not sure when I first realized the history of the Clarke Institute, nowadays part of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). Certainly by 2019, I knew its role as the major gatekeeper for Ontario and much of Canada. By the time I came out, CAMH was no longer the only clinic that one could go to in order to get provincial funding for transition related surgery, so I was spared the long waits that were common there. As a result, most of my experience with the Clarke and CAMH would come through research for my exhibition, Transition Related Surgery: Fight For Access. 

​Through my research on the Clarke, I came across an early reflection on the gender clinic, written by Dr. Betty Steiner, the head of the program. Entitled A Gender Identity Project: The Organization of a Multidisciplinary Study, the article discussed the steps that the Clarke Institute, along with the University of Toronto, took to set up a steering committee and the various stages that they expected trans people to navigate in order to get their medical needs met. By the time this article was published in February 1974, the clinic had already been operating for four full years, having opened in 1969.
 
I find the first stage of their diagnosis to be most revealing. It is here where Steiner and the other Clarke psychiatrists figure out “the degree to which they are involved in a transsexual life style [sic].” (Steiner et al., 8) A questionnaire would be given to the patients to fill out, describing their life experiences and how gender has played a role. The information provided would be cross referenced as the patient went further, ensuring that they were telling the truth. This was necessary, the authors state, because “the desire for a sex change operation is usually so great that information can easily be distorted to fit the assumed requirements of the project.” (Steiner et al., 9) If the patient was not willing to supply this information, they would not be allowed to continue.

What I find most interesting is that, even in 1974, it was recognized that trans people were telling the psychiatrists and clinicians exactly what they wanted to hear. It thus became necessary to refer back to the information provided at the beginning in order to prove that trans people were not lying to the Clarke’s employees. Steiner, just like the authors of Mascara and Hope, saw the relationship as adversarial. It was their job to find what was truth and what was lies, in order to gatekeep transition. If one did not play the game properly, they would be kicked to the curb and the Clarke would refuse to help.
 
There is a very clear lineage between Mascara and Hope and Gender Identity Project. One creates the gates that must be overcome in order to prove a patient’s transgender identity, the other informs how to conceal and effectively maneuver around those gates. Although separated by nearly 40 years and an ocean, they clearly both speak to the lengths that trans people have had to go to in order to live their life. Neither side trusts the other, and as such, utmost caution is deployed wherever possible.
 
This history goes back even further, however. 40 years prior to Steiner’s article, the English translation of Lili Elbe’s biography Man into Woman: An Authentic Record of a Change of Sex was published. As Zoë Playdon describes in The Hidden Case of Ewan Forbes And the Unwritten History of the Trans Experience (my book review can be found here), Elbe’s biography was “a hidden narrative, a kind of underground railroad or secret route for trans women eager to access medical support.” (Playdon, 39)
 
Through Man into Woman, Elbe was able to offer other trans people a narrative that would be acceptable to the medical establishment of the day. Based upon an earlier case in Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis, Elbe showed the readers that were able to read between the lines the sorts of life details to tell doctors. These included early cross gender experiences and an adolescent urge to be the other gender. (Playdon, 41) In essence, that they always knew they were trans. As Playdon notes, these details of Elbe’s life are also true for the trans man at the centre of her book, Ewan Forbes.
 
Looking at Playdon’s analysis of Man into Woman shows that the kinds of stories that Mascara and Hope was advising its readers to adopt and the Clarke was trying to sniff out were around even in the earliest days of transgender health care. Trans people would find what worked and share it with others. Even as trans health care became more prominent and standardized, the need for these narratives remained. The barriers to entry produced an adversarial relationship that saw all participants as untrustworthy.
 
Here in Ontario, things are far from perfect, but access has improved greatly from a dismantling of these barriers. The Clarke’s successor, CAMH, is no longer the only clinic one can go to in order to be prescribed hormones or get a reference letter for surgery. This was progress made over the past decade, with much further to go.
 
But unfortunately, that is not the direction that the wind is blowing at the moment. Since January 2023, there have been well over 400 bills introduced in the US targeting trans people. Many of these aim to limit transition related care for trans youth, with some of them even limiting access for adult trans people.

​Hacking Transition: Surviving on Mascara and Hope. 2013.
Playdon, Zoë. The Hidden Case of Ewan Forbes: And the Unwritten History of the Trans Experience. New York: Scribner, 2021.
Steiner, Betty W., A. S. Zajac, and J. W. Mohr. “A Gender Identity Project: The Organization of a Multidisciplinary Study.” Canadian Psychiatric Association Journal Vol 19, No 1 (Feb 1974): 7-12.

​If I ever do get a chance to create that exhibit, Kit Heyam’s recent book Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender will most certainly be the first I reach for. 

​Before We Were Trans is an absolutely splendid read. Brilliantly written, I feel like I will be coming back to it frequently just to find quotes to use in my various trans museum talks. It feels like everything I wished Leslie Feinberg’s Transgender Warriors could have been, focusing in on specific examples rather than broad strokes that left me wanting more. The image of trans history that Heyam presents here is messy, but I mean this in the absolute best way possible. Trans history cannot delineate itself from other histories, it weaves through and around many different communities across time. It is messy not because  Heyam did a poor job weaving together a narrative, but specifically because they chose to make that messiness integral to the ways that they told trans history.
 
As much as Before We Were Trans is concerned with telling trans history, it is equally invested in the ways that we discuss trans history. This is, in my opinion, the book’s biggest strengths. Much has been written previously about who we decide counts as “trans” enough to be part of a trans history, and this book is certainly in conversation with those. This is where the messiness comes into play. Transgender is a difficult thing to nail down, and nearly every historian is going to draw the line differently. Heyam, and I am in agreement with them, suggests a very broad definition, one that, quoting Margaret Middleton, values “queer experience as expertise and gaydar as epistemology” (20). This inevitably runs up against and, in some respects, counter to other communities’ views of history. For them, this is no issue, for instead, they choose to look at it from a sense of community. They write, “in real life, we don’t own or claim the members of our communities; we certainly don’t forbid them to be members of multiple communities at once. Instead, we make space for them; we support, validate and celebrate their presence in our community” (27). It does not need to be an either or for history, it can be an all of the above.
 
This is not to be interpreted as a universal call to appropriate those who have lived their lives beyond the traditional gender binary into a monolithic trans history, however. Rather, it is about recognizing the mess and approaching it from every angle and allowing a full range of understanding around these examples. This is made especially clear in the final chapter where Heyam discusses Two-Spirit and hijira identities. While these are gendered experiences, they are intrinsically tied to spirituality and so to carelessly define them as trans would be to flatten their experiences and silence the specifically spiritual sides. These are just as important, and much care needs to be taken to speak to them on their own terms. Heyam does wish to see it as part of trans history, but in a way that does not detract from their place in other indigenous histories as well. Rather than policing the borders of histories, we allow free roam between them.
 
I truly cannot express enough how much I appreciate this book. This is a must read for anyone interested in trans history, especially for museum work. Not just for the examples of gender-nonconforming behaviour it maps throughout time, but for the ways it speaks to those. It applies a brilliantly trans focused lens to view the past that is absolutely deserving of being emulated by other professionals. One such example is something that I have spoken about previously, the act of admitting uncertainty when discussing queer history. Admitting uncertainty is the term used in the Victoria & Albert Museum’s text writing guide, where it is better to recognize the limits of our knowledge rather than hide them. This is fine in theory, but in practice, it can result in making queer and trans lives nearly invisible. Before We Were Trans, however, shows how we can see the fullness of trans existence without neglecting the other possibilities. We can recognize the vibrancy of gender expression without arbitrarily deciding that trans perspectives are inherently lesser.
 
This really only scratches the surface of this wonderful book. There were moments reading it where I was left speechless for how effortlessly it made its arguments. Aspects that are so common to me they have a regular place in my trans history talks were reframed in such a way to reveal incredible new perspectives. It is magnificent. If you are looking for a book that will enrich your understanding of gender throughout time, Before We Were Trans is just the one for you. Unfortunately, it is not yet available for purchase in North America (I had preordered it on British Amazon in order to get it shipped to me as soon as I could), but come September 2022, it should be on the top of some reading lists. This is not one to miss.
 
I want to conclude with a passage from the epilogue:

Sources:

Johannesson, Asa, and Clair Le Couteur. "Nonbinary Difference: Dionysus, ~~Arianna~~, and the Fictive Arts of Museum Photography." In Museums, Sexuality, and Gender Activism, edited by Joshua G. Adair and Amy K. Levin, pp. 167-179. London: Routledge, 2020. 
​
Heyam, Kit. Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender. London: Basic Books, 2022.

Dime museums were obsessed with sex. Not always blatantly, this was Victorian America, after all. But sex played a major role in how the freak show was exhibited. Dime museums were highly conservative institutions, concerned with the moral backbone of the nation. Andrea Stulman Dennett, author of Weird and Wonderful: The Dime Museum in America, describes the temperance movement as one origin point for the dime museum, with it offering an alternative to the drunkenness of the saloon (3). Barnum himself was a reformed alcoholic and put on performances of popular temperance plays at his American Museum. By and large, dime museum managers did not seek to rock the boat but instead to play to as wide an audience as possible. Education was not their primary goal either, at least not education in the way we might think today. Instead, it was more of a moral education, not of the scientific world but of what was acceptable in society. Facts merged with fiction to tell the story that managers wanted, one that would not offend but engage the audience, walking the fine line between what is acceptable and what is not.
 
Robert Bogdan, author of Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit, notes two main forms of display for freak shows in the 19th Century, the aggrandized and the exotic presentation. Aggrandized presentations play into common Victorian understandings of a middle class life; a husband and wife, children, sat in a living room with the requisite finery of a suit for the man and fancy dress for the woman. This is, of course, always heterosexually coded. The performer was intended to be seen as a prime example of middle class ideal, with just one exception, whatever it was that set them apart. The exotic, meanwhile, was exactly what it sounds like. Exotic presentations played on racist stereotypes and caricatures. These would speak to white supremacist beliefs in the viewer of their superiority over other parts of the world, justifying atrocities like colonial genocides. While both aggrandized and exotic forms were oppositional to each other, it was not unheard of for a performer to transcend styles later in their career, if they were particularly popular.
 
In her book, Tyburczy argues that all museums are sex museums. Pointing to Bennett and the exhibitionary complex, she stated that museums played a role in defining and disciplining what was seen a sexually normal. Much like for Bennett, display is central to her concept. Through display, museums and other institutions were able to make new and evolving forms of sex and sexuality apparent to the visitors. Through seeing these forms, the visitor was taught to internalize the differences and the limits of what was acceptable. The act of display here is multifaceted, from simply seeing the objects to the performative obfuscation of sex as a way to titillate.
 
Interestingly, Tyburczy does briefly discuss the dime museum within this perspective. But the discussion is rather limited. Most of the instances used in Sex Museums are around the more explicit forms of sex and sexuality; men going in to be titillated or women being taught the moral failings of their bodies. A section later on in the book also examines the display of Saartje Baartman, the Hottentot Venus. While these are excellent points to make, Baartman is prime for a case study on the intersections between race and sex, there is a lot more subtle displays of sex within the dime museum that is worth unwrapping. Most of Tyburczy’s examples look to the exotic mode, but for this piece, I am going to focus instead on the aggrandized forms, as here is where sex and sexuality shows up in more subtle and fascinating ways.

​The marriage was a massive affair. Even during the Civil War, it was front page news. The wedding was attended by all of New York City’s most prominent people. While President Lincoln was not able to be there for the wedding itself, he did host the newlyweds at the White House afterwards. There were many photos taken of the event and sold as mementos. Following their marriage, Barnum announced that Lavinia had given birth. The child would join them on their tour of Europe as well as appear in photos like this one, taken at Matthew Brady’s studio.
 
The child was not theirs. Lavinia never actually gave birth. Instead, the baby seen in this photograph came from a foundling home in New York, not far from the studio. While on tour, Lavinia remembered years later that they “exhibited English babies in England; French babies in France; and German babies in Germany.” (Bogdan, 157). What was the point of the deception? It is not surprising that Barnum lied about it, but why that lie in particular?
 
Sex. Sex was at the heart of this display and so many others. The fact the child is there is less important than what the child represents. And what they represented was the ability to not only have sex and consummate a marriage, but also to reproduce. This is how sex finds its way into aggrandized freak show displays. The exotic mode might be more apparent with its overt sexualization, but that acts as a foil to the more “appropriate” outlets of sexuality, in the form of a heterosexual family.
 
The role of the family and the sexuality that underpins it would even come to tarnish the freak show toward the end of the 19th century when eugenics started to gain popularity. Prior to 1900, the freak show was not seen as distasteful, the display of abnormal bodies was not something that members of the scientific community objected to. Instead, science and freak shows worked in tandem with each other, with museum managers bringing scientists to confirm the veracity of the manager’s claims. Once eugenics started to become popular, this would change. Rather than a curiosity to see, the “proper” way deal with the otherness was to hide it from sight and ensure they got the “help” they needed. Disability and difference were deemed to be detrimental to a proper working society, and so the denizens of the freak show were made into threats. Not just the fake cannibals of the exotic displays but the giants and little people of the aggrandized as well. In the aggrandized form, that threat was made manifest through the display of a family, the unspoken yet visible ability to breed and possibly threaten the moral capacities of the citizens.
 
This is how the dime museum managed to discipline sex and sexuality in the 19th century. It was not just through the sexually explicit display of bodies but also through the more normative displays as well. The use of families served to police the audience’s view of sexuality, creating a limited view of what was allowed and what was not. By placing the family at the centre of many aggrandized forms of display, the dime museum created an example of what was appropriate. This was too effective, for when public opinion shifted towards social Darwinism, the freak show was suddenly deemed obscene and inappropriate for audiences. 

Bibliography

Bogdan, Robert. Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.

Dennett, Andrea Stulman. Weird and Wonderful: The Dime Museum in America. New York : New York University Press, 1997.

Tyburczy, Jennifer. Sex Museums: The Politics and Performance of Display. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016.

​Toronto is not always the best when it comes to telling its queer history. During my undergraduate degree, I lived with friends at Brunswick and Bloor, a short walk away from the Brunswick House. The Brunny, as it was often called, was a local pub that was renown among students and graduates of the University of Toronto. It was not until after I graduated and moved away that I discovered the story of the Brunswick Four, a group of lesbians who were arrested in 1974 for singing “I Enjoy Being A Dyke” during an open mic night. These arrests resulted in one of the largest gay liberation protests the city had seen. There was a queer history right under my feet, and I was none the wiser.
 
Any Other Way lets you in on these stories that were hidden from view, and tells them in incredibly personal ways. The book is an anthology with over 100 authors giving their stories, their experiences, their lives in this city. Sometimes, the voices even contradict and present differing opinions. It all comes together to present a multifaceted image of Toronto. It is hard not to feel reflected in some way.