Histories of the Transgender Child
by Jules Gill-Peterson
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Description
With transgender rights front and center in American politics, media, and culture, the pervasive myth still exists that today's transgender children are a brand new generation--pioneers in a field of new obstacles and hurdles. Histories of the Transgender Child shatters this myth, uncovering a previously unknown twentieth-century history when transgender children not only existed but preexisted the term transgender and its predecessors, playing a central role in the medicalization of trans show more people, and all sex and gender. Beginning with the early 1900s when children with "ambiguous" sex first sought medical attention, to the 1930s when transgender people began to seek out doctors involved in altering children's sex, to the invention of the category gender, and finally the 1960s and '70s when, as the field institutionalized, transgender children began to take hormones, change their names, and even access gender confirmation, Julian Gill-Peterson reconstructs the medicalization and racialization of children's bodies. Throughout, they foreground the racial history of medicine that excludes black and trans of color children through the concept of gender's plasticity, placing race at the center of their analysis and at the center of transgender studies. Until now, little has been known about early transgender history and life and its relevance to children. Using a wealth of archival research from hospitals and clinics, including incredible personal letters from children to doctors, as well as scientific and medical literature, this book reaches back to the first half of the twentieth century--a time when the category transgender was not available but surely existed, in the lives of children and parents. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
Just an incredible work. Gill-Peterson manages to rewrite much of the standard narrative of transitional medicine by drawing on histories of gender medical intervention in children, and ideas about their development as they shifted over time, and does so just so powerfully. I probably need to return to this to understand just how the concept of plasticity is being used, though I think its inscrutability is to some extent the point--that is is too slippery to be actually useful even by the people who constructed it as a concept.
Gill-Peterson's deep care for the children written about in the book is obvious and makes the book all the more compelling, as well as the argumentation about how the figure of the trans child as a marker of show more futurity, and with no history attached, does damage to actual trans kids (and, I would argue, also trans adults.) All of this is just so important and really challenging me to rethink not only my own work but also the way I frame my politics around urging care for trans kids. The conclusion kind of made me cry! It was so good and so important and I'm going to return to this again and again. show less
Gill-Peterson's deep care for the children written about in the book is obvious and makes the book all the more compelling, as well as the argumentation about how the figure of the trans child as a marker of show more futurity, and with no history attached, does damage to actual trans kids (and, I would argue, also trans adults.) All of this is just so important and really challenging me to rethink not only my own work but also the way I frame my politics around urging care for trans kids. The conclusion kind of made me cry! It was so good and so important and I'm going to return to this again and again. show less
Included in a blog post and resource list at https://booksbeyondbinaries.blog/2019/06/10/non-fiction-about-gender-and-trans-e...
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Author Information
7 Works 348 Members
Awards and Honors
Classifications
- Genres
- Sexuality and Gender Studies, Nonfiction, LGBTQ+, History, General Nonfiction
- DDC/MDS
- 306.76 — Society, government, & culture Social sciences, sociology & anthropology Social Behavior - Dating, Marriage, Divorce Sexual relations Sexual orientation, transgender identity, intersexuality
- LCC
- HQ77.95 .U6 .G55 — Social sciences The family. Marriage, Women and Sexuality The Family. Marriage. Women Sexual life Transexualism
- BISAC
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- Members
- 147
- Popularity
- 222,061
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (4.30)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 4
- ASINs
- 1
