University of Calgary Press

About the Book

An illuminating look at the transatlantic, transgender community that helped to shape the history and study of gender identity.

From the turn of the twentieth century to the 1950s, a group of transgender people on both sides of the Atlantic created communities that profoundly shaped the history and study of gender identity. By exchanging letters and pictures among themselves they established private networks of affirmation and trust, and by submitting their stories and photographs to medical journals and popular magazines they sought to educate both doctors and the public.

Others of My Kind draws on archives in Europe and North America to tell the story of this remarkable transatlantic transgender community. This book uncovers threads of connection between Germany, the United States, and the Netherlands to discover the people who influenced the work of authorities like Magnus Hirschfeld, Harry Benjamin, and Alfred Kinsey not only with their clinical presentations, but also with their personal relationships.

With more than 180 colour and black and white illustrations, including many stunning, previously unpublished photographs, Others of My Kind celebrates the faces, lives, and personal networks of those who drove twentieth-century transgender history.

About the Authors

Alex Bakker is a transgender historian and writer from The Netherlands.

Rainer Herrn is senior lecturer at the Institute for History of Medicine and Ethics in Medicine and the Charité University Hospital Berlin, and founding member of the Magnus Hirschfeld Society Berlin.

Michael Thomas Taylor works as a translator and editor in Berlin.

Annette F. Timm is professor of History at the University of Calgary and editor of The Journal of the History of Sexuality.

Praise for Others of My Kind:

Carefully blends academic discourse with archival material, adding the faces and bodies of real people to a conversation that has long ignored the people behind the history of medical care. Essential

—A.N. Weiss, CHOICE Reviews

Others of My Kind presents an exciting reconsideration of how we do trans history, negotiating historical tensions between scientific expertise and trans self-presentation, visibility and passing, medical progress and individual privacy. Contending admirably with the ethics of examining “difficult” photographs, the authors challenge voyeuristic traditions of trans representation through a finely attuned focus on intimate narratives and self-creation, showing how trans individuals actively shaped the priorities of 20th-century medical research from Berlin to New York, and from Amsterdam to Casablanca.

—Katie Sutton, Australian National University

Informative, readable, and fascinating, Others of My Kind: Transatlantic Transgender Histories delivers on its title, showing how a fascinating international network of trans people from Europe and North America expressed themselves in the privacy of their own homes, communicated amongst themselves, and interacted with a similarly transnational set of sympathetic medical experts.

—Robert Deam Tobin, Clark University

A vital contribution to transgender history. Others of My Kind powerfully illustrates the important role that images played in crafting transgender communities across Europe and North America in the twentieth century. Lucidly written with fantastic photographs, Others of My Kind is required reading for anyone interested in learning more about the history of trans individuals and the communities they formed.

—Emily Skidmore, Texas Tech University

Bracing and intimate, Others of My Kind reads trans agency back into the challenging archive of twentieth century medical science. A uniquely collaborative work that revitalizes the photograph as historical evidence, each chapter places trans people’s lives, feelings, and social worlds in the center frame. Essential reading, not just for queer and transgender scholars but for anyone who feels the powerful and complicated pull of trans history.

—Jules Gill-Peterson, University of Pittsburgh

Awards