Transgender History: The Roots of Today's Revolution

"First of all because I think it’s an important book. And it’s a good kind of entrée into trans* history, in the United States in this case, post- World War II . This is a very recent strand of historical research and Susan Stryker offers a thoroughly researched monograph that provides an overview. That’s also why I think it’s a good starting point, because it talks about politics and about social movements, but it also talks about personal stories, and a really important aspect of trans* histories, namely the developments and discussions in the medical and psychiatric fields. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter But it also covers conflicts within the queer spectrum, within the LGBT field, the discussions about trans-exclusive feminism, and how the gay liberation movement in the 1970s at some point began to exclude gender non-binary figures, gender transgressive people, trans* people, and how they were then forced to form their own movement. So it’s a good overview of that whole history, which is a part of queer history that we still don’t know a lot about. I think that’s one of the interesting points of Stryker’s book, the story she’s telling is that there is a success story after the 1990s. She talks about the early moments in the 1950s and 1960s, early forms of organising. And then there is that catastrophe that she dates to 1973, one paradigmatic moment when Sylvia Rivera had to fight for her right to speak at a Christopher Street day gay pride parade. Sylvia Rivera was one of the people at the core of the Stonewall uprising. This moment that is so important for gay history was misremembered as a gay white event. And the trans* people of colour and all other kinds of groups who were actually crucial for the uprising itself, were excluded from the memory of the event. So this is the moment where—at least that’s Stryker’s analysis—the ways part of the trans* movement and the gay liberation movement, and also the lesbian feminist movement. Later on, Stryker describes this moment in the 1990s, where things come together again, where queer theory with the contributions of Eve Sedgwick, Judith Butler and Gayle Rubin plays a major part, where sex worker activism, sex-positive feminism, play a major part and where—and I find this very convincing—the internet plays a major part. All that contributes to new audiences across divides between trans*, gay, lesbian, and also white and people of colour activism. And there is a growing awareness and visibility of trans* people as well. All that comes together to form a more powerful movement. History follows on the heels of that empowerment, with a growing body of literature on trans* history. But it’s also interesting because Stryker’s story follows that development right up to the present. It’s really an activist’s history. In all the books we’re going to talk about—and this is typical of queer history—there is a strong link between activism and research. Strykers book exemplifies that."