Precedented
A Trans History of Family
Will be published approx. on 3. June 2027
Book
Hardback
320 pages
978-1-3998-1672-4 (ISBN)
Description
Who gets to be a family in today's world?
The idea that the family is under threat is everywhere - on the lips of politicians, religious leaders, populist pundits. Yet family has never been the biologically essentialist tradition it's often presented as. From Greek and Christian myths of birthing fathers or gender-nonconforming Roman emperors, to seventeenth-century men pregnant with thousands of babies or nineteenth-century women outraged that parents would gender their toddlers, to the Hijra of South Asia or drag mothers of New York's ballroom scene, history shows us that the family has always had a more complicated relationship to gender. Trans and queer people aren't threatening to destroy an ancient, natural institution: humans have been complicating it from the very beginning.
Precedented shows us different, better ways of thinking about the relationship between gender, biology and family. Blending history with memoir, Kit Heyam combats contemporary political narratives to explore how feminist struggles are entangled with struggles for trans liberation, and that women stand to gain the most from thinking about family differently. Western culture today has much to learn not just from our own past, but from the glorious variety of many-gendered families across the world.
Understanding this history can anchor and sustain us politically and it can also help us to build the families we want. If we had the solidarity, community and inspiration of history - if all of us could rethink the place of gender and biology in family life - what new ways of thinking about family might we be able to build?
The idea that the family is under threat is everywhere - on the lips of politicians, religious leaders, populist pundits. Yet family has never been the biologically essentialist tradition it's often presented as. From Greek and Christian myths of birthing fathers or gender-nonconforming Roman emperors, to seventeenth-century men pregnant with thousands of babies or nineteenth-century women outraged that parents would gender their toddlers, to the Hijra of South Asia or drag mothers of New York's ballroom scene, history shows us that the family has always had a more complicated relationship to gender. Trans and queer people aren't threatening to destroy an ancient, natural institution: humans have been complicating it from the very beginning.
Precedented shows us different, better ways of thinking about the relationship between gender, biology and family. Blending history with memoir, Kit Heyam combats contemporary political narratives to explore how feminist struggles are entangled with struggles for trans liberation, and that women stand to gain the most from thinking about family differently. Western culture today has much to learn not just from our own past, but from the glorious variety of many-gendered families across the world.
Understanding this history can anchor and sustain us politically and it can also help us to build the families we want. If we had the solidarity, community and inspiration of history - if all of us could rethink the place of gender and biology in family life - what new ways of thinking about family might we be able to build?
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United Kingdom
Publishing group
John Murray Press
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Trade binding
Illustrations
N/A
Dimensions
Height: 240 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 17 mm
Weight
464 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-3998-1672-4 (9781399816724)
Copyright in bibliographic data is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or its licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
approx. 06/2027
Basic Books
€14.99
Not yet available
Person
Kit Heyam is a university lecturer, a queer history activist, and a trans awareness trainer who has worked with organisations across the UK. They have been committed to queer history since their teens, when they found the sense of community they were lacking by identifying with queer figures from the past, and their first book, The Reputation of Edward II, 1305-1697: A Literary Transformation of History, was the first account of how fourteenth-century English king Edward II acquired his queer reputation. They live in Leeds with their partner Alex.