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

​For over a year now, I have had an idea for an exhibition on trans history in the back of my head. Called Gender Complexities, it would look at examples of gender expression beyond a traditional gender binary around the world. This was spurred on by Asa Johannesson and Clair Le Couteur’s article “Nonbinary Difference: Dionysus, ~~Arianna~~, and the Fictive Arts of Museum Photography”. In it, the authors use a bust of Dionysus that had previously been catalogued as Arianna to discuss how fragile our understandings and perceptions of gender can be. My goal with this exhibition was/will be (depending on if I get to design it) to expand how we think of trans history. Trans history is often viewed rather limitedly, either individuals we can definitely prove were trans or indigenous groups that white trans people will cling to as an example of prelapsarian existence, often with little care for those groups beyond their use to claim that “we have always existed”. The breadth of trans history is far broader and begging to be told.

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

​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. 

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