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wogslandwriter's review
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
3.5
This book would be better titled A Gay History of the United States because the white gay male bias of the author is extremely strong and handicaps his narrative in many ways. I learned a lot reading this book and I really appreciated the expansive way in which Bronski approached gay history. He aimed to provide historical details and context for the queer events and people he wrote about while also building a historical narrative for the reader to trace gay history through time and through the American history they likely already know.
However, his bias was extremely strong. He focused mainly on the gay males, usually white gay males of history. When Bronski did discuss women or transgender people, not nearly as much deferrence was shown nor as much information was shared overall. His discussion of transgender people was fraught with misgendering of nonbinary people such as the Public Universal Friend and misgendering transgender men. He also barely discussed transgender women throughout history.
Bronski's history is interesting to read and I learned a lot. However, it also drove home how important it is for transgender people to tell our own stories because even our alleged community leaders leave us out of the history of our own community. Every mention of transgender people felt like Bronski was just tacking us on, so that he could call the book and LGBT history without actually discussing the transgender history of the United States. This book would have been much better if Bronski had been honest and aware of his bias. If I had known going it the book was almost entirely about cisgender gay men I would have been much less annoyed at the exclusion of the rich history of transgender people.
Overall, I would not recommend this book to a friend without finding a book on transgender history to recommend alongside it.
However, his bias was extremely strong. He focused mainly on the gay males, usually white gay males of history. When Bronski did discuss women or transgender people, not nearly as much deferrence was shown nor as much information was shared overall. His discussion of transgender people was fraught with misgendering of nonbinary people such as the Public Universal Friend and misgendering transgender men. He also barely discussed transgender women throughout history.
Bronski's history is interesting to read and I learned a lot. However, it also drove home how important it is for transgender people to tell our own stories because even our alleged community leaders leave us out of the history of our own community. Every mention of transgender people felt like Bronski was just tacking us on, so that he could call the book and LGBT history without actually discussing the transgender history of the United States. This book would have been much better if Bronski had been honest and aware of his bias. If I had known going it the book was almost entirely about cisgender gay men I would have been much less annoyed at the exclusion of the rich history of transgender people.
Overall, I would not recommend this book to a friend without finding a book on transgender history to recommend alongside it.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Racism, Lesbophobia, Misogyny, Outing, Sexism, Transphobia, Sexual content, Slavery, Terminal illness, Pedophilia, Police brutality, Hate crime, and Homophobia
Minor: Forced institutionalization, Genocide, and Deadnaming
This book covers the history of gay people in the US from precolonial to modern times, so there is discussion of the violence done against us and other minority groups. The AIDs epidemic is also discussed in later chapters.
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