Before We Were Trans

A New History of Gender

By: Kit Heyam Ph.D Ph.D

Narrated by: Kit Heyam Ph.D Ph.D

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. 

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

This is such a searing, reflexive read - in conversation with the likes of Shon Faye, Akwaeke Emezi and Leslie Feinberg - that needs to be in everyone's hands expeditiously.—Paula Akpan, journalist and co-founding director of Black Girl Festival

A fascinating and important work

The core idea, that gender has never been static and that there were always individuals who played with different concepts is a cornerstone of history. This book, which successfully challenges the inevitability of gender, is an important work of history and I can't recommend it enough. Very little of our modern worldview is inevitable and it's books like this that demonstrate humans have always been both curious and complex in the ways they move through the world.

My introduction to Queer History

I use queer as in abnormal to the status quo in the title. I don't remember where or who online recommended this book but I'm glad I saved it. I was hoping for a history book on possible trans history that was inclusive to marginalized groups of people besides just trans people, this is exactly that (coming from a white person and this book was written by a white person). The stories told by Kit were riveting and I can see myself in many of these vastly different humans. More than anything, the detail put on how we do not know if many of these people were trans but they could have been; they also could have been a plethora of different identities, including or excluding being gender queer. I have only an American public school education, learning true history, the history colonizers tried to erase, is so deeply comforting

Research, history, transgender rights; it’s a masterclass of what we do when we become ourselves.

Compelling reading. I just started reading and I was blown away The transgender experience is poorly understood by many and this book opens a door to understanding

FANTASTIC

This is an amazing book, my favorite to date. I see myself reflected in these pages

forgot to review this 09-13-25

yeah no this is pretty good

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