Books like Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman

I've read a few reviews of this and a lot seem to bash Feinberg for not presenting a thoroughly academic history of transgender identity. I do think this kind of critique misses the point: quite spectacularly. It's definitely true that if you want a meticulous, detailed, jargony drudge through trans history then this is not the book: it neither has the style, content or length for that kinda project.But this book from the beginning opens as a personal story of discovering oneself *through* history, rather than the more boring (in my view!) task of discovering history per se (though this is important in other contexts of course).As someone who has always had an atypical gender expression, when you start discovering the possibility of gender variance the way the world neatly compartmentalizes into two - male and female - begins to smack you quite rudely in the face. And then you see it everywhere: in the way people talk, walk, their hairstyles, their mannerisms, their beliefs, their favourite colour, their partners, the way they have sex or who they want to have sex with. All neatly carved into a tidy dichotomy: male and female. Useful, as Feinberg argues, not for us as free people but for the ruling classes who need to mechanically restrict our gender expression for their own devices.Trans identity has a history of being invisible. Which is strange because trans people also have a history of being loved, celebrated and respected across the globe and across times.It's within this framework that "Transgender Warriors" operates: it attempts to find the invisible trans self in the rich and bountiful trans history that exists; bringing that self to light, through history. Hence, elucidating the history in the process.From Joan of Arc to Two-Spirit people or from Aphrodite to Brandon Teena: trans people - and gender variance more generally - has a deeply rich history. And perhaps unexpectedly a rich history in working class resistance. This book is about Feinberg discovering that history in tandem with discovering hirself. As someone who was repressed and oppressed on the basis of gender identity and exploited from the standpoint of class, Feinberg was attempting to locate hirself - through history - as part of a collective able to fight back and resist. Hir use of history is on the whole factual but as a result of hir form, somewhat biographical. This was supplemented by the picture gallery at the end which the author again used as a way of quite creatively melding history with the biographical stories of people's personal lives and struggles. Perhaps the downside was the only argument Feinberg offered for why trans oppression exists is because it's yet another way of reinventing and enforcing class hierarchy. and of course she's not wrong, but hir argument was crude in places.On the whole though, a fantastic book. Read it. If not, your loss.