Juliet McKenna has a great post up today about how the “facts” of history change depending on who is interpreting them. She talks in particular about how the existence of same-sex relationships in ancient Greece have been interpreted differently down the years. You can find the post here.

This is a subject very close to my heart, because the way in which trans history is interpreted is also very much culturally subjective. Anything written more than 60 years ago was almost certainly written by someone who didn’t know that trans people existed at all, let alone might have existed in the past. Even today, many historians have still bought into the idea that trans people are a creation of medical science, and that no one was trans before Magnus Hirschfeld and his friends invented the concept.

In contrast, some people who do trans history are all too willing to interpret any evidence of cross-dressing as an example of a trans identity. Some of this is cis people who can’t distinguish between a Halloween costume, a drag queen and a trans woman. And some of it is trans people eagerly looking for anyone and anything that might be like them. If you want to convince professional historians of your case, you have to maintain a fairly skeptical stance.

Much of what I was doing in me paper for this year’s LGBT History Month was looking at the evidence for trans identities in ancient times and deciding how solid it was. Thankfully these days there are cis historians who have heard of people like hijra and two spirits and are willing the make the same arguments that I wanted to make.

By the way, if you are wanting to read that paper, the reason it hasn’t gone online yet is that I have had an offer of publication. I do have a short version just looking at Sumer in peer review for the Notches blog, so that may appear some time soon. Otherwise watch this space.