A Short History of Trans Misogyny - Hardcover

Jules Gill-Peterson

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1804291560 ISBN 13: 9781804291566

Publisher: Verso Books, 2024

Synopsis

An accessible, bold new vision for trans feminism’s intersectional and global future

“A beautifully written and argued book.” - Torrey Peters, author of Detransition, Baby

There is no shortage of voices demanding everyone pay attention to the violence trans women suffer. But one frighteningly basic question seems never to be answered: why does it happen? If men are not inherently evil and trans women do not intrinsically invite reprisal―which would make violence unstoppable―then the psychology of that violence had to arise at a certain place and time. The trans panic had to be invented.

Award-winning historian Jules Gill-Peterson takes us from the bustling port cities of New York and New Orleans to the streets of London and Paris in search of the emergence of modern trans misogyny. She connects the colonial and military districts of the British Raj, the Philippines, and Hawai’i to the lively travesti communities of Latin America, where state violence has stamped a trans label on vastly different ways of life. Weaving together the stories of historical figures in a richly detailed narrative, the book shows how trans femininity emerged under colonial governments, the sex work industry, the policing of urban public spaces, and the area between the formal and informal economy.

A Short History of Trans Misogyny is the first book to explain why trans women are burdened by such a weight of injustice and hatred.

About this title

About the Author

Jules Gill-Peterson is US based writer, activist, professor, and the author of the award-winning book <I>Histories of the Transgender Child, published in 2018. Gill-Peterson is a tenured professor of History at Johns Hopkins University and a General Editor of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, the journal of record in the field. She has earned a public reputation for fiercely advocating for transgender children and women, with contributions to and appearances on NPR's All Things Considered and On the Media, CNN, CBS, the BBC, and Xtra magazine. She was profiled by the Guardian and published an op-ed on trans kids in The New York Times in March 2021. She is active on Twitter (with over 20K followers) and has written articles on trans politics for Them, Jewish Currents, The New Inquiry, The Lily, The Funambulist,and The Conversation. She is a cohost of the flagship LGBT podcast at Slate, Outward. She is an executive producer, starring opposite Angelica Ross, Jen Richards, and Zackary Drucker as narrator in the feature documentary Framing Agnes (director Chase Joynt), which world premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2022, where it won the Next Innovator Award and the Next Audience Award.

From the Back Cover

Why are trans women the most targeted of LGBT people? Why are they in the crosshairs of a resurgent anti-trans politics around the world? And what is to be done about it by activists, organizers, and allies?

A Short History of Transmisogyny is the first book-length study to answer these urgent but long overdue questions. Combining new historical analysis with political and activist accessibility, the book shows why it matters to understand trans misogyny as a specific form of violence with a documentable history. Ironically, it is through attending to the specificity of trans misogyny that trans women are no longer treated as inevitably tragic figures. They emerge instead as embattled but tenacious, locked in a struggle over the meaning and material stakes of gender, labor, race, and freedom.

The book travels across bustling port cities like New York, New Orleans, London and Paris, the colonial and military districts of the British Raj, the Philippines, and Hawai'i, and the lively travesti communities of Latin America. The book shows how trans femininity has become legible as a fault line of broader global histories, including colonial government, the sex work industry, the policing of urban public space, and the line between the formal and informal economy. This transnational and intersectional approach reinforces that trans women are not isolated social subjects who appear alone; they are in fact central to the modern social world.

Edition details

• Publisher: Verso Books
• Publication date: 2024
• ISBN 10: 1804291560
• ISBN 13: 9781804291566
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192