Eli Erlick‘s Before Gender explores trans history from 1850 to 1950 through thirty intersectional and transnational case studies, centring trans lives often erased from mainstream accounts. Though the book’s methodology and framing invites debate, particularly around claims of retrospective trans identification, it makes an important contribution to transgender historiography and activist scholarship, writes Maedbh Pierce.
Before Gender: Lost Stories from Trans History, 1850-1950 by Eli Erlick offers insight into an underexplored period of transgender history: the century between 1850 and 1950. Erlick cites a desire to amend the lack of history written about trans lives before the 1900s as a motivating force behind their work. However, there is not quite the absence on the topic Erlick claims. Whipping Girl (2007), a critical work by trans woman Julia Serano, similarly gathers stories of trans lives forgotten by history from this period, such as those of Chevalier d’Éon, Lili Elbe, and Christine Jorgenson. Nat Raha and Mijke van der Drift in Trans Femme Futures: Abolitionist Ethics for Transfeminist Worlds (2024) radically imagine a border-melting and decolonising transfemme liberation. What is lacking in available scholarly literature is such a concentrated account of case studies, with an exclusive focus on the lives of trans people – a gap breached by Erlick’s work. The book’s captivating narrative approach expands, through the accounts of the selected transgender individuals, into the broader social and political dynamics that shaped the treatment of trans people during this period. The work aligns with Elrick’s trajectory in terms of their personal life, activism, and professional trajectory. She came out as trans at eight years old, medically transitioned five years later, and served on the board of an LGBTQ+ youth conference at just 15 and founded the Trans Student Educational Research.
Against a linear trans history
Before Gender departs from tidy linear narratives of transgender political organising beginning only in 1969 (with Stonewall) or with the establishment of the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries in 1970. Similarly, in line with the approach of many contemporary scholars in the field, such as Susan Stryker in Transgender History (2017), Judith Butler in Gender Trouble (1990), or more recently, Shon Faye in The Transgender Issue (2021), Erlick opts to broaden their scope. In Erlick’s case, the focus is transnational, looking at figures outside, forgotten by, or excluded from, Anglophonic accounts of history. Additionally, there is an immense intersectionality to Erlick’s work, engaging with indigenous, Black Lives Matter, and trans movements worldwide.
The work traces the lives of thirty transgender trailblazers. An examination of Muksamse’lapli, a two-spirit or transfeminine member of the Klamath Nation, provides insight into indigenous experiences and their correlations with settler trans people. The section on Georgia Black – who in her death, brought Black and white communities together as they celebrated her life – illuminates interracial dynamics in twentieth-century America. Another of the book subjects, Okiyo was a danshō (an assigned male at birth sex worker who lived and presented as a woman) living in early twentieth-century imperial Osaka, whose story draws together US and Japanese historical relations.
Reflecting diversity and intersectional struggles
Erlick connects these stories, which might at first be mistaken as disparate, and rescues them from disremembering. Their diversity reflects the diversity of transgender lives, and the book enables insight into the emancipatory strategies of these trans individuals. We see the intersections of class, as noted in Gill-Peterson’s scholarship, where affluent trans-identifying individuals often found themselves legible to medical institutions, whereas the same privilege was not afforded to trans people of colour. For example, while two white British brothers in the mid-1900s, Mark and David Ferrow, were lauded and celebrated by their community for their medical transitions, figures such as Georgia Black, a community leader but a poor Black woman living in the rural South of the US whom Erlick describes as the “pillar of her town”, could not even dream of accessing similar medical aid in a similar period. Her achievement lay in surviving in the face of extreme adversity, rather than the full realisation of her transgender identity.
The accounts achieve a coherent construction of transgender history, offering insight into the lives, hardships, and victories experienced by transgender people across the globe within this time period.
The accounts, Erlick contends, do not build upon each other as a traditional historical narrative might. What they do achieve, however, is a coherent construction of transgender history, offering insight into the lives, hardships, and victories experienced by transgender people across the globe within this time period. Through Masoud El Amaratly’s story, we gain insight into Iraqi society and his experience as a mustarjil (an Arabic phrase meaning “becoming man”). El Amaratly became one of Iraq’s most renowned folk singers and lived openly as a trans man until his 1944 murder. Poisoned by his wife, rumours circulated that it was because she had found out he was trans, though most agreed that it was most likely for his money. Through the story of the activist Gerda von Zobeltitz, we learn about the German transvestitenschein (“transvestite certificate”)and the under-documented 1930 Rauchfangswerder riots, one of the first pre-Stonewall queer uprisings. In this way, Erlick moves towards her goal of stitching “together the massive gaps in public understanding of trans history” and, in tandem, revealing “how vibrant, exciting, and common trans life was during the 1850-1950 period.”
Today’s language in retrospect
Attempts to retrospectively determine whether someone is trans may be seen as problematic, though some scholars and activists do take this approach. Individuals sometimes claimed as trans, such as the briefly mentioned Joan of Arc or the unmentioned Anne Lister, may not, despite their non-conforming mode of dress, have disidentified with their assigned sex. By and large, Erlick tells the stories of those who identified themselves as transgender within their lives. They share that they “cautiously reviewed each story to avoid including people who may have identified as cisgender today.” But grey areas remain, demanding an analysis that Erlick occasionally glides over. She addresses this issue by citing “the Cleopatra problem”, the complete lack of agency historical figures have over what we call them. Supporting her choice to apply the term is Erlick’s clear definition of transness from the outset: While there are many varying definitions of what it may mean to be trans, her definition encompasses “anyone identifying outside of their sex assigned at birth.”
Trans liberation is not an impossible feat, the book reminds us, but one that requires community, allyship and solidarity.
In Before Gender, Erlick achieves a clear goal to demonstrate that there is nothing novel or uncommon about being transgender; trans folks have been around for much longer than the current anti-trans hysteria would suggest. Trans liberation is not an impossible feat, the book reminds us, but one that requires community, allyship, and solidarity. Amalgamating theory, history, and culture, the work provides an insight into transgender history rooted in trans stories and lived experiences. In this way, Before Gender is unique from works by the likes of Serano or Stryker, who include valuable trans stories but do not hold them as the central focus. While invaluable to gender scholars, the book, in its narrative structure, reaches beyond the academy and will undoubtedly be of value to activists and allies seeking a grounded historical examination of trans life as a counterargument to rising anti-trans politics. The book will also leave readers curious about Erlick’s forthcoming work that turns to our contemporary moment, Belonging Through Exclusion: Understanding The Transgender Far Right.
Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Main image: Wewhe, or We’wha (c. 1849–1896) a Zuni Native American lhamana from New Mexico via RawPixel.
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