Reflections Upon a Truly Transformative Book

In describing the absurd, unique manner by which American law has long treated – and indeed, often continues to treat – non-procreative, non-heteronomative sexual behavior, I can do no better than to quote from Alfred Kinsey et al.’s 1949 work Concepts of Normality and Abnormality in Sexual Behavior:

[The law] proscribes [sexual acts which do no damage to property or to person] on the ground that they are crimes against nature – that is, abnormal or perverse behavior – and punishable because the are so rated. They are punishable without respect to the mutual Desire of the parties involved to engage in such activities and irrespective of the fact that the persons immediately concerned may find satisfaction in their performance. In all the criminal law, there is practically no other behavior which is forbidden on the ground that nature may be offended, and that nature must be protected from such offence. This is the unique aspect of our sex codes.

(From Concepts of Normality and Abnormality in Sexual Behaviour by A.C. Kinsey, Wardell B. Pomeroy, Clyde E. Martin, and Paul H. Gebhard)

“[…] that nature may be offended, and that nature must be protected from such offence.” Today, in an American society where to many of those in positions of political, ecclesiastical, and economic power are insufficiently educated for the task, inadequate in their mental acuity, and increasingly subject to their own simplistic religious prejudices, the term “nature” can be interchanged with that of “god.” It has long perplexed me that a religion in which the adherents proclaim that their deity is omniscient, omnipotent, and eternal is unable to perceive the illogicality of such a being in any way needing protection and defense by a group of (as a species) ignorant, impotent, mortals.

But turning back to the idea of consensual sexual activity being somehow an offense to nature. To consider only a small slice of non-procreative sexual behavior – that of same-sex sexual behaviour, defined by Gómez, Gónzalez-Megías & Verdú in their 2023 paper The evolution of same-sex sexual behaviour in mammals, “any attempted sexual activity between members of the same sex,” they continue, “has been reported in over 1500 animal species, including all main groups from invertebrates such as insects, spiders, echinoderms, and nematodes, to vertebrates such as fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. Same-sex sexual behaviour is particularly prevalent in nonhuman primates, where it has been observed in at least 51 species from lemurs to apes.”
“In over 1500 animal species” – if such behaviour is offensive to nature, nature certainly has had a peculiar way of making something so offensive to it so widespread. I jest, of course, as such directed anthropomorphic activity on the part of nature implies a belief in a cognizant entity planning how life was created and how it has evolved. To assert such intelligent design is as absurd as asserting that non-procreative variation in sexual behavior, including presentation of such, is somehow offensive to it. And yet, we too often – especially those in the United States – continue to do just that.

Most recently, after years of slow but more or less steady progress in improving the level of inclusivity of sexually and gender diverse people in American society, in part by correcting some (but by no meals all) of the more egregious wrongs in the nation’s body of laws, with the rise to, and immediate abuse of, power by Mr. Trump and his sycophantic allies, this progress has been horrifically reversed, with the place of politically designated scape-goat for all the nation’s ills, both real and politically imagined, becoming people who are transgender of gender non-conforming (TGN).

As someone who has long considered myself as both open and broad minded when it comes to how people conduct their private lives, I assumed that I was – and this is where the embarrassing part comes in – “in good standing” in regard to such matters. Discrimination against or arbitrarily assigning blame to someone simply because of their sexual or gender identity, so I would say, is both illogical as well as ethically wrong. However I would nevertheless scratch my head upon someone telling me their preferred pronouns. “It’s just ungrammatical,” so I would say. I was even more perplexed when someone asked me what my preferred pronouns were. “Look at me – what do you think?” I’d ask. In a certain aspect, I was what might have been described as thinking “this far but no farther” when it came to such matters. Then I began reading A History of Transgender Medicine in the United States; From Margins to Mainstream and everything I thought I knew, every pathetic platitude in which I felt myself secure as a compassionate and understanding person, was turned upon its head. I was rocked to my very core but thankfully having reached this core I was able to rebuild upon a new structure of understanding from a genuinely foundational level thanks to what I read in the book.

Assembled and edited by the team of Carolyn Wolf-Gould, Dallas Denny, Jamison Green & Kyan Lynch, and containing the work of forty-three contributors, including the editors themselves, A History of Transgender Medicine in the United States; From Margins to Mainstream is a book that to call it paradigm-shifting would still be woefully insufficient. Described by its publisher as “the most comprehensive history of transgender medicine to date,” it presents a remarkable chronology of the subject from ancient times up to 2024 (just before the socio-political structure of the United States turned on its head), including the developments of surgical techniques, protocols of care, psychological theories, and practices, and establishments of clinics and research institutions relevant to transgender medicine. As a history of a particular subject within the practice of medicine, it is remarkably thorough and surprisingly accessible to a non-specialist reader. However it is much, much more than just this.

The authors contributing chapters to the book are drawn from a wide range of professions and occupations, including medical and academic doctors, researchers, psychologists, sociologists, advocates, and activists. This in itself gives the work its breadth of scope. What gives it its remarkable depth – and indeed heart and power – is the fact that many of them are themselves transgender or gender diverse. They are writing not only about their field of specialty; they are writing about it from the perspective of someone who understands intimately the implications of laws and medical practices from both the past and in the present. Coupled with interspersed profiles of people both past and present who themselves were TGD and whose lives and lived experiences had an effect upon the history of transgender medicine and the laws pertaining to it in the U.S., as well as elsewhere in the world, each chapter of the book is a lesson in both correcting the readers’ incorrect assumptions and enlarging their understanding of the extraordinary, multi-faceted reality that is transgender medicine itself as well as a superb, powerful, and deeply moving introduction into the complexities of being TGD both in the past as well as the present.

I have already personally recommended this book to medical doctors, scholars, chaplains, and many other I know whose lives or work touches upon the TGD community. They were all to a one delighted to learn of it and very eager to begin reading it for themselves. However the book has such power, such an ability to put not only faces but existences to those who are TGD and who, in the annus horribilus in which this essay is being written, are facing levels of political, religious, and social persecution merely for who they are and how they wish to live their lives that haven’t been seen for decades if not in fact centuries, that I hope it will not only be read by any and all who have even a passing interest in or curiosity about the subject, I deeply wish that it would be read by those who seek to marginalize, isolate, and scape-goat anyone who is transgender or gender diverse. To borrow from something Chuck Bowden told Brooke Gladstone during an interview on WNYC’s On the Media regarding his book Dreamland: The Way Out of Juarez, “My dream is to invite a reader into a room and pour a nice cup of tea, and then nail the damn door shut.”

Please read this book. In light of the present state of the United States, people’s lives depend upon what it contains being known by as many people as possible in order that what is presently happening to those who are transgender or gender diverse may be stopped and the entire course of American society be corrected.

Title: A History of Transgender Medicine in the United States; From Margins to Mainstream

Authors: edited by Carolyn Wolf-Gould, Dallas Denny, Jamison Green & Kyan Lynch

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Format: paperback and hardcover

ISBN: 9798855801217 (paperback), 9798855801224 (hardcover)

Pages: 794 pp.

Date of Publication: February 2025

In accordance with Federal Trade Commission 16 CFR Part 255, it is disclosed that the copy of the book read in order to produce this review was provided gratis to the reviewer by the publisher.