
Before We Were Trans
A New History of Gender
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Narrated by:
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Dr. Kit Heyam Ph.D
About this listen
A 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 offers a new, radically inclusive trans history, chronicling expressions of trans experience that are often overlooked, like gender-nonconforming fashion and wartime stage performance. Before We Were Trans transports us from Renaissance Venice to seventeenth-century Angola, from Edo Japan to early America, and looks to the past to uncover new horizons for possible trans futures.
©2022 Dr. Kit Heyam, PhD (P)2022 Seal PressListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"Before We Were Trans is a thoughtful, fun, and refreshingly readable romp through the history of gender variance before the invention of contemporary ‘transgender’ categories and concepts.—Susan Stryker, author of Transgender History
"Before We Were Trans provides much needed context, nuance, and breadth to our understanding of human gender diversity throughout history and in different cultures. While people who we might now call transgender or LGBTQIA+ have always existed, Kit Heyam shows how both individuals' and societies' understanding of sex, gender, and sexuality are situational, multifaceted, and constantly evolving.—Julia Serano, author of Whipping Girl and Sexed Up
"Before We Were Trans enlarges our understanding of trans histories and highlights the beauty, complexity, and contradictions of doing historical work - all in a voice that invites the reader in, and not only teaches us what to think about trans lives in the past, but how to think about them.—Hugh Ryan, author of The Women’s House of Detention
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The Big Reveal
- By: Sasha Velour
- Narrated by: Sasha Velour
- Length: 6 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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This book is a quilt, piecing together memoir, history, and theory into a living portrait of an artist and an art. Sasha Velour illuminates drag as a unique form of expression with a rich history and a revolutionary spirit. Each chapter strips off a new layer, removing one tantalizing glove and then another, to reveal all the twists and turns in the life of a queen. As Sasha recalls her own journey, from the women who raised her, to learning the craft of an artist, to success, disaster, and more, she also uncovers the history of queer life around the world that made it all possible.
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Much more than expected
- By Anonymous User on 05-22-23
By: Sasha Velour
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A Human History of Emotion
- How the Way We Feel Built the World We Know
- By: Richard Firth-Godbehere
- Narrated by: Richard Firth-Godbehere
- Length: 11 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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In A Human History of Emotion, Richard Firth-Godbehere takes listeners on a fascinating and wide ranging tour of the central and often under-appreciated role emotions have played in human societies around the world and throughout history — from Ancient Greece to Gambia, Japan, the Ottoman Empire, the United States, and beyond.
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another woke intellectually conformist who can't stop talking about climate change
- By Anonymous User on 01-19-25
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The Great Cat Massacre
- And Other Episodes in French Cultural History
- By: Robert Darnton
- Narrated by: Ken Kliban
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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The landmark history of France and French culture in the 18th century, a winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
By: Robert Darnton
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The Women's House of Detention
- A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison
- By: Hugh Ryan
- Narrated by: Janet Metzger
- Length: 13 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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The Women’s House of Detention, a landmark that ushered in the modern era of women’s imprisonment, is now largely forgotten. But when it stood in New York City’s Greenwich Village, from 1929 to 1974, it was a nexus for the tens of thousands of women, transgender men, and gender-nonconforming people who inhabited its crowded cells. Some of these inmates—Angela Davis, Andrea Dworkin, Afeni Shakur—were famous, but the vast majority were incarcerated for the crimes of being poor and improperly feminine.
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Thought provoking and Important
- By Jillian on 01-15-24
By: Hugh Ryan
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Black on Both Sides
- A Racial History of Trans Identity
- By: C. Riley Snorton
- Narrated by: C. Riley Snorton
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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The story of Christine Jorgensen, America's first prominent transsexual, narrated trans embodiment in the postwar era. Her celebrity, however, has obscured other mid-century trans narratives. Their erasure from trans history masks the ways race has figured prominently in the construction and representation of transgender subjects. In Black on Both Sides, C. Riley Snorton identifies multiple intersections between blackness and transness from the mid-19th century to present-day anti-Black and anti-trans legislation and violence.
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Marginalized academic philosophy: pros and cons
- By Paul on 05-02-23
By: C. Riley Snorton
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The T in LGBT
- Everything You Need to Know About Being Trans
- By: Jamie Raines
- Narrated by: Jamie Raines, Shaaba Lotun
- Length: 5 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Hey, I'm Jamie, a 29-year-old trans guy from the UK. I've been transitioning for 12 years now after realising I was trans (by accident!) at sixteen years old. I knew I was a boy since the age of four, but realised whilst growing up that I was different. It was only in my teens that I found the words to express who I was and what I needed to do. Since then, I've been on testosterone for more than a decade - I know, I can't believe it either - I've also had top and bottom surgery and legally changed my sex, so I know a few things about the transitioning process and being trans!
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Amazing
- By Victor Rhodes on 08-03-24
By: Jamie Raines
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It Gets Better . . . Except When It Gets Worse
- And Other Unsolicited Truths I Wish Someone Had Told Me
- By: Nicole Maines
- Narrated by: Nicole Maines
- Length: 5 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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For the first time, in her own words, Nicole tells the story of her journey from childhood in rural Maine to the spotlights of Hollywood, sharing the lessons she’s learned along the way. With clever wit and unflinching honesty, she tackles some of the most insidious messaging absorbed by queer kids and all young women, from the idea that any one thing can (or should) ever really “fix” you, to wondering what’s wrong with you when things don’t always feel better, and reminding us that, sometimes, a happy ending is only the beginning of the story.
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Everyone should read this book!
- By Melanie Rule on 03-08-25
By: Nicole Maines
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Reclaiming Two-Spirits
- Sexuality, Spiritual Renewal & Sovereignty in Native America
- By: Gregory Smithers, Raven E. Heavy Runner - foreword
- Narrated by: Shaun Taylor-Corbett
- Length: 11 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Reclaiming Two-Spirits decolonizes the history of gender and sexuality in Native North America. It honors the generations of Indigenous people who had the foresight to take essential aspects of their cultural life and spiritual beliefs underground in order to save them.
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Earth-Shaking
- By Andre on 06-19-23
By: Gregory Smithers, and others
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A Place for Everything
- The Curious History of Alphabetical Order
- By: Judith Flanders
- Narrated by: Julia Winwood
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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From a New York Times best-selling historian comes the story of how the alphabet ordered our world. A Place for Everything is the first-ever history of alphabetization, from the Library of Alexandria to Wikipedia. The story of alphabetical order has been shaped by some of history's most compelling characters, such as industrious and enthusiastic early adopter Samuel Pepys and dedicated alphabet champion Denis Diderot. But though even George Washington was a proponent, many others stuck to older forms of classification.
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You have to love library science
- By A. Yoshida on 10-23-21
By: Judith Flanders
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Against Empathy
- The Case for Rational Compassion
- By: Paul Bloom
- Narrated by: Karen Cass
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Most people, including many policy makers, activists, scientists, and philosophers, have encouraged us to be more empathetic - to feel the pain and pleasure of others. Yale researcher and author Paul Bloom argues that this is a mistake. Far from leading us to improve the lives of others, empathy is a capricious and irrational emotion that appeals to our narrow prejudices. It muddles our judgment and often leads to cruelty. We are at our best when we are smart enough not to rely on it and draw upon a more distanced compassion.
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Starts strong, fizzles out.
- By Tristan on 04-04-17
By: Paul Bloom
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Kick
- The True Story of JFK's Sister and the Heir to Chatsworth
- By: Paula Byrne
- Narrated by: Antonia Beamish
- Length: 12 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Encouraged to be "winners" from a young age, Rose and Joe Kennedy's children were the embodiment of ambitious, wholesome Americanism. Yet even within this ebullient group of overachievers, the fourth Kennedy child, the irrepressible Kathleen, stood out. Lively, charismatic, extremely clever, and blessed with graceful athleticism and a sunny disposition, the alluring socialite fondly known as Kick was a firecracker who effortlessly made friends and stole hearts.
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Very Nicely Done
- By Kaks on 07-21-16
By: Paula Byrne
My introduction to Queer History
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A fascinating and important work
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FANTASTIC
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kinda surface level, but it was a good look at history
what i liked about it more than the actual historical analysis was the methods she described and the reasoning for why we should look at things from a certain lense
and it complemented my knowledge well as i read other books about queer feminist history
a bit disapointed tbh but i think that speaks more to the quality of the other books ive read so far and not to the lack of quality of this one. worth the buy imo
forgot to review this 09-13-25
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Written with care
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The history we need right now
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a meaningful yet flawed view on chronological relativism
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I have learned SO much!
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Lovely Broad Overview of Trans History
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Understanding
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