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arinheck's review against another edition
3.75
Graphic: Misogyny, Transphobia, Homophobia, and Sexism
Moderate: Classism
Minor: Medical content, Death, and Colonisation
finalgirlfall's review against another edition
2.0
i thought it was a respectable choice, first of all, that manion tried to use "they/them" pronouns consistently for every female husband mentioned in the text. but i did--honestly--think it was somewhat odd that in the epilogue, where she talked about dr. alan l. hart, she continued this practice,[1] as hart is generally agreed to have been one of the first trans men to undergo a hysterectomy.[2](!) like, when there's a strong consensus on what identity a historical figure aligned with, i feel like you can use "he/him" for that individual.
on a related note, i thought it was bad, like, Scholarly Practice for manion to make unsubstantiated claims about how some of the female husbands she wrote about may have identified. the most glaring example of this comes from chapter 6, where manion writes, "Like the sailor Samuel Bundy, [Alfred Guelph] may have embraced a nonbinary gender" (182, emphasis added).
that's not a term guelph would have had at their disposal, first of all. and secondly, like, all we can say with any certainty about guelph, from the historical record, is that at some times they dressed and lived as a woman, while at other times they dressed and lived as a man! we do not, as far as i'm aware, have any personal writings from them to help fill in their interiority, and so it's bad scholarly ethics to try and make concrete claims about how they identified.
also, i just thought this was a bizarre take--in the epilogue, manion writes the following (regarding dr. alan l. hart and how he "may have" identified as a trans man): "Does the motivation really matter if the result is the same?" (268, emphasis in original) … like, i would argue that it does matter, actually! maybe not to Society as a whole, but definitely on an individual level, and definitely on an intracommunity level. see e.g. Franz Boas, "The Occurrence of Similar Inventions in Areas Widely Apart," and see also Deryn Guest, "Modeling the Transgender Gaze"--particularly the works she cites.[3][4]
1. see e.g. this section, where manion writes, "Dr. Alan L. Hart, often celebrated as the first woman to graduate from the University of Oregon medical school, pursued a medical transition shortly thereafter. In 1917, they underwent a hysterectomy and sterilization so their body was more aligned with what their doctor called their 'natural male instincts' and 'aggressive male characteristics.'" (268, emphasis added)
2. i am using this term in a willfully anachronistic sense--i don't know if "trans man" would have been a term hart knew, or thought to use as a self-identifier.
3. Boas, Franz. "The Occurrence of Similar Inventions in Areas Widely Apart." Science 9, no. 224 (1887): 485–86. doi:10.1126/science.ns-9.224.485.
4. Guest, Deryn. "Modeling the Transgender Gaze: Performances of Masculinities in 2 Kings 9–10." In Transgender, Intersex, and Biblical Interpretation, edited by Teresa Hornsby and Deryn Guest, 45–80. Atlanta, GA: SBL Press, 2016. doi:10.2307/j.ctt1cx3tqd.7.