Where is our trans history?

 A sitcom might say the word ‘transgender’, but translated that category to deception, freakishness, and revulsion. A newspaper feature would describe a person as ‘transsexual’ but make it clear that they would forever be the sex/gender they were assigned at birth, and all the rest was delusion and mutilation.
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So it was not just that a woman assigned male at birth should be prevented from living her life as she saw fit, but that ‘he’ should be made culturally legible again, and categorised as a sinner.
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When I finally found those key words for myself, the histories they unlocked did not present these past lives as they were lived, but instead upheld and promoted the authors’ gendered beliefs. All people assigned female at birth who lived as men – no matter how much they insisted they were men – were described as lesbians.


CN Lester has written a brilliant essay: A Future Without a Past - trans history, erasure, and possibilities. A few excerpts, above, should wet your appetite for more.

Go to A Gentleman and a Scholar for the link.