Transgender History. The Roots of Today’s Revolution. Author: Susan Stryker.

Professor Susan Stryker has written a heavily revised version of her Transgender History. It is practically a new book. Just released in November 2017, this volume is an up-to-date examination of transgender/genderqueer history from its beginnings through the Trump election and the “explicitly transgender inclusive and affirming” Women’s Marches that occurred throughout the US on January 21, 2017 (Stryker, p. 235).

But this updated book is not just a history. It is also an exploration of gender-nonconforming community and an invitation to those (who are interested or isolated) to join. History is used as a way to both inform about the past and inform about the culture. A group’s history is part of its culture and this one has struggled against a great deal of prejudice. As a result, Stryker presents, through successes and setbacks, a people, a heritage and a set of individual activists, of whom a community member can be proud.

For all that is positive about this book, it does not begin well. After a stirring introduction, the first chapter is designed to dampen enthusiasm. It is entitled “Contexts, Concepts, and Terms,” and is a confusing bombardment of definitions. Considering that her community has not yet settled upon a definitive term of self-definition, this leaves the reader tangled in a morass of words. Further confounding the issue is Stryker’s continuing use of “Transgender” as an all-encompassing word. Stryker admits that, “in recent years, some people have begun to use the term transgender to refer only to those who identify with a binary gender other than the one they were assigned at birth” and that transgender is a 1990s term “similar to what genderqueer, gender-nonconforming and nonbinary mean now” (Stryker, p. 37). This chapter functions as a wet washcloth on the first embers of anticipation. It would have been better if the author had included some limited terminology in her introduction; and reworked this chapter as a glossary appended to the end.

The book truly begins in Chapter Two: “A Hundred Plus Years of Transgender History.” It portrays genderqueer history in the United States from the 1800s to the 1960s. Chapter Three, on “Trans Liberation,” overlaps slightly with the previous chapter, illustrating the rise of a human rights ethos within the community and activism from the 1950s through the 1970s. The last three chapters cover more contemporary developments in nonbinary history and community from the 1970s through today.

Professor Stryker is not afraid of confrontation. She is resolutely critical of prejudice from both the right and the left. While she defines herself as “transfeminist,” Stryker is critical of feminists who exclude transgender women from events that are for “women-born-women” only. She also takes aim at lesbian and gay organizations that were late in their support of gender-nonconforming people. But, as one might imagine, she is most expository regarding oppression directed at her community from the larger society, a topic faced throughout the narrative.

The last section in the book is particularly current. It is called “Backlash, Survival, and Resistance.” Stryker begins this section by reasoning that “it would be remarkable if all the historic changes in how society understands and accepts trans and gender-nonconforming people failed to produce a backlash among people hostile to changes” (Stryker, p. 226). She depicts the trajectory of reaction against the Obama years and progressive political gains for nonbinary and other minorities, which culminated in the Trump presidency. But her analysis is hopeful. After describing the Women’s March and the “trans inclusive” mass human rights work that produced it, she ends her narrative by citing Martin Luther King’s revision of a Theodore Parker quote: “The arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” As an activist, Stryker is not one to depend on historical determinism to secure that justice. She adds “we can do more than cross our fingers and hope for the best if we ourselves work together to bend our little corner of the universe in that direction” (Stryker, p. 236).

Stryker, Susan. Transgender History. The Roots of Today’s Revolution. New York: Seal Press, 2017.

Feminine and Opposition Journalism in Old Regime France. Le Journal des Dames. Author: Nina Rattner Gelbart.

In France, before the revolution of 1789, there existed three classifications of periodical publications: There were the official publications, which were licensed by the Royal Court, staffed by aristocratic royalists, and propounded sentiments acceptable to the monarchy. There were the underground publications which were illegal and included writings that ranged from pornography to political dissent. The third kind of publications were tolerated publications. These were periodicals with alternative or marginal views, attempting to convince the public to accept new propositions, who wished to reach a wider audience than the underground press.

Le Journal des Dames (1759 – 1778) falls into the tolerated category. Its 19-year history reflects the fluctuations in French politics during the Ancien Regime. In the author’s words, “these papers kept alive a dissenting journalistic spirit and fought to achieve the maximum press freedom possible under a system of censorship…Periods of leniency, such as the mid-1760s under [book trade minister] Choiseul and the mid-1770s under [ministers] Malsherbes and Turgot, encouraged the frondeur [opposition] journalists to believe that the reform and redefinition of social values would be possible within the  established order, but such periods of repression as Maupeou’s ministry and Le Camus de Neville’s directorship of the booktrade forced the frondeurs into  more subversive modes of discourse” (Gelbart, p. 291).

Though Le Journal des Dames would become a feminist publication, that was not its original purpose. The two first male owners and editors presented it as a confection to amuse bored aristocratic and middle class women by printing their writings. It failed miserably. But three successive female editors gave the paper its more serious purpose of encouraging women’s creativity and independence. The final set of editors were men who, although they valued women’s independence, were more interested in using Le Journal as a mouthpiece for anti-autocratic ideas, resulting in the paper’s final suppression.

Gelbart is a diligent academic historian. Unearthing the record of this forgotten periodical involved deep submersion in the stacks of eleven different French archives. The author’s dedication to historical accuracy is reflected in her narrative: Though she expresses a great deal of enthusiasm for the three female editors, when one of them writes that Le Journal was distributed by 81 booksellers throughout Europe, Gelbart is quick to point out that this claim was “a sham, a publicity stunt” (Gelbart, p. 112). Professor Gelbart would not sully years of intense research by allowing inaccurate statements to stand.

Throughout her work, this historian builds a case that “the Journal des Dames was the first French paper to encourage women to think, take a stance, and speak up…it worked with many opposition papers transmitting explosive combinations of subversive principles and values that would later find their fullest expression in Revolutionary discourse” (Gelbart, pp. 302-3). In presenting this view, Gelbart is patient, thorough and effective.

Gelbart, Nina Rattner. Feminine and Opposition Journalism in Old Regime France. Le Journal des Dames. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.