Discover the trailblazing lives of thirty trans people who will radically change everything you’ve been told about transgender history. Highlighting influential individuals from 1850 to 1950 who are all but unknown today, Eli Erlick shares thirty remarkable stories from romance to rebellion and mystery to murder. These narratives chronicle the grit, joy and survival of trans people long before gender became an everyday term.
Organised into four parts, paralleling today’s controversies over gender identity – kids, activists, workers and athletes – Before Gender introduces figures whose forgotten stories transform the discussion. These ground-breaking histories include two of the first teens to access gender-affirming medical treatment, a countess who instigated an LGBTQ+ riot forty years before Stonewall and the greatest female billiards player of the 1910s. Bold and visionary, Erlick’s debut uncovers these lost stories from the depths of the archives to narrate trans lives in a way that has never been attempted before.
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Ben Miller is a writer and historian. He is co-host of the podcast Bad Gays and co-author of the best-selling Bad Gays: A Homosexual History (Verso, 2022). He holds a PhD in history from the Freie Universität Berlin, and is currently at work on the first biography of the fashion designer Rudi Gernreich, who was one of the two degrees of separation between Karl Marx and Cher.
Eli Erlick is an activist, author, and educator based in New York City. Her first book, Before Gender: Lost Stories from Trans History, 1850-1950 (Beacon Press/Manchester University Press, 2025), uncovered thirty trans narratives that radically disrupt popular ideas about transgender people. Her forthcoming second book, Outsiders Within: Understanding the Transgender Far Right (University of Chicago Press, 2026), explores why right-wing transgender people adopt their views and what we can do to prevent others from joining them. She is the program director of the NYC Trans Archives and holds a PhD in Feminist Studies and History of Consciousness from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
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Shakespeare & Sons
Wednesday July 22 / 18:45
Wine and Other Drinks Available
Free and Welcome to All
