Before Gender: Lost Stories from Trans History, 1850–1950

“Transgender people are nothing new,” according to this brilliant survey of “forgotten” trans lives. Historian Erlick makes a persuasive case that the anxiety surrounding trans identities today has not always been present in popular culture—that trans people have “existed... everywhere from the largest cities to the most remote villages” and been generally accepted by their communities. Rather, Erlick shows, it has been institutions—governments, schools, athletic associations—that have historically put up resistance to trans identity, enacting deliberate “interventions” to erase trans people. Examples include a “mass queer and trans uprising” against police in early 1930s Berlin, led by the now nearly forgotten trans countess Gerda von Zobeltitz, “that was later erased from history by Nazis”; and “one of Europe’s greatest athletes,” the Czech javelineer Stefan Pekar, who transitioned in 1936, “only for conservative bureaucrats to remove him from the record books.” Other lives that Erlick uncovers show evidence of unhindered acceptance while also substantially revising to earlier dates trans history’s supposed “firsts.” These include a Black formerly enslaved trans woman whose Freedmen’s Bureau–approved transition in the 1860s is earlier than any previously discovered. The fascinating conclusion Erlick draws is that there’s no such thing as a “trans first”—only instances of first official acceptance. It’s an essential and eye-opening paradigm shift. (May)