Interesting Old Gender Stuff
Something that’s fascinated me for a very long time is comparing my life and experiences as a trans woman to those of people similar to me across different times and cultures. If you’ve been following me for any length of time this will come as no surprise, I think the majority of my body of work (such as it is) has that sort of theme at the core.
Despite not being a very spiritual person otherwise, I can’t really think of any other way to describe the feeling of connection between myself and those like me elsewhere. There’s nothing like reading the words of someone who came before and understanding that we’re cut from the same cloth on a deep level, even as times and cultures change around us. And just as often, there are disagreements. So much has changed in the way we think about ourselves and the cultural discussion around us over the years. Stuff that was taken as gospel when I first discovered myself back in 2014 is outmoded or even held in disdain now (Remember HBS? True Transsexual discourse? Sincere discussions of AGP? Good lord), and the Cleo of 2014 felt the same way about the glimpses she got of 2000s era trans culture back then too.
But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to believe very strongly that one way or another there’s a lot to be gained from being able to properly enter a dialogue with the primary sources we have from those eras, rather than, as I did as a young trans girl, simply brushing them off as out of touch old ladies while my friends and I roughhoused in the woods behind their house.
So, here’s a handful of print resources, blogs, personal sites, and whatever else that I’ve found while nosing around on the internet, authored by people much like myself, and perhaps a little bit like you too. As a heads-up, many of these documents contain language or ideas that we tend to find frustrating today, but I think many of these documents were authored by earnest, respectable women looking for meaning where it could be found and trying to carve out a space for themselves, much as we do today. Your reward for your patience is that every so often they’ll make a joke that we still think is funny, and you’ll get to see them as the family they really are.
If you know of a cool oddball transfem primary source you think might be good to include here, drop me a line at plasticwomen@proton.me!