Histories of the Transgender Child by Jules Gill-Peterson
The widespread misconception that today’s transgender children are a whole new generation—pioneers in a field of new difficulties and hurdles—remains despite the fact that transgender rights are prominent in American politics, media, and culture. This misconception is dispelled in Histories of the Transgender Child, which reveals a previously unrecognized period of history in the twentieth century during which transgender children not only existed but also predated the term “transgender” and its forerunners, playing a crucial role in the medicalization of trans people, as well as all sex and gender.
Histories of the Transgender Child by Jules Gill-Peterson
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Julian Gill-Peterson reconstructs the medicalization and racialization of transgender people starting in the early 1900s when children with “ambiguous” sex first sought medical attention, moving through the 1930s when transgender people started looking for doctors involved in changing children’s sex, to the creation of the category gender, and finally, the 1960s and ’70s when, as the field institutionalized, transgender children started to take hormones, change their names, and even access gender confirmation They place race at the centre of their work and at the centre of transgender studies throughout, highlighting the racial past of medicine that excludes black and trans children of colour through the idea of gender plasticity.
Little is currently known about early transgender history, life, and its significance for kids. This book goes back to the first half of the 20th century, a time when the category transgender was not yet available but certainly existed, in the lives of children and parents, using a wealth of archival research from hospitals and clinics, including incredible personal letters from children to doctors.
Another widely held belief is that this generation of youth is the first to have grown up with the knowledge that they can choose their adult gender. What Gill-work Peterson’s demonstrates is that ideas about transgender children have a history that dates at least to the early 20th century, and that it is truly connected to ideas about the plasticity or malleability of the body and the mind, which are closely related to issues of race. As a result, Snorton’s book and Gill-book Peterson’s are having a really intriguing debate.
