Others of My Kind: Transatlantic Transgender Histories
© 2020
From the turn of the twentieth century to the 1950s, a group of transgender people on both sides of the Atlantic created communities that profoundly shaped the history and study of gender identity. By exchanging letters and pictures among themselves they established private networks of affirmation and trust, and by submitting their stories and photographs to medical journals and popular magazines they sought to educate both doctors and the public.
Others of My Kind draws on archives in Europe and North America to tell the story of this remarkable transatlantic transgender community. This book uncovers threads of connection between Germany, the United States, and the Netherlands to discover the people who influenced the work of authorities like Magnus Hirschfeld, Harry Benjamin, and Alfred Kinsey not only with their clinical presentations, but also with their personal relationships. It explores the ethical and analytical challenges that come with the study of what was once private, secret, or unacceptable to say.
With more than 180 colour and black and white illustrations, including many stunning, previously unpublished photographs, Others of My Kind celebrates the faces, lives, and personal networks of those who drove twentieth-century transgender history.
Product Details
- Publisher: University of Calgary Press
- Page Count: 298 pages
- Dimensions: 8.5in x 0.7in x 11.0in
Informative, readable, and fascinating, Others of My Kind: Transatlantic Transgender Histories delivers on its title, showing how a fascinating international network of trans people from Europe and North America expressed themselves in the privacy of their own homes, communicated amongst themselves, and interacted with a similarly transnational set of sympathetic medical experts.
-Robert Deam Tobin, Clark University
Others of My Kind presents an exciting reconsideration of how we do trans history, negotiating historical tensions between scientific expertise and trans self-presentation, visibility and passing, medical progress and individual privacy. Contending admirably with the ethics of examining "difficult" photographs, the authors challenge voyeuristic traditions of trans representation through a finely attuned focus on intimate narratives and self-creation, showing how trans individuals actively shaped the priorities of 20th-century medical research from Berlin to New York, and from Amsterdam to Casablanca.
-Katie Sutton, Australian National University
A vital contribution to transgender history. Others of My Kind powerfully illustrates the important role that images played in crafting transgender communities across Europe and North America in the twentieth century. Lucidly written with fantastic photographs, Others of My Kind is required reading for anyone interested in learning more about the history of trans individuals and the communities they formed.
-Emily Skidmore, Texas Tech University
List of Galleries
Forward by Aaron Denver
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Annette F. Timm, Michael Thomas Taylor, Alex Bakker, and Rainer Herrn
Das 3. Geschelcht (The 3rd Sex): Illustration PRactices in the First Magazine for Transvestites
Rainer Herrn
"I am so greatful to all you men of medicine": Trans Circles of Knowledge and Intimacy
Annette F. Timm
In the Shadows of Society: Trans People in the Netherlands in the 1950s
Alex Bakker
Visual Medical Reheetorics of Transgender Histories
Michael Thomas Taylor
TransTrans: Exhibiting Trans Histories
Michal Thomas Taylor
Trans Transatlantic
Nora Eckert
Historicizing Transgender Terminology
Annette F. Timm with Michael Thomas Taylor
Bibliography
Index
