Histories of the Transgender Child

Histories of the Transgender Child shatters the widespread myth that today’s transgender children are a brand new generation.

Jules Gill-Peterson reconstructs the medicalization and racialization of children’s bodies from the early 1900s to the 1970s, highlighting how transgender children preexisted the term transgender and its predecessors.

The book uses archival research from hospitals and clinics, including personal letters from children to doctors, to show how the concept of gender relies on the medicalization of children's presumed racial plasticity.

It foregrounds the racial history of medicine that excludes black and trans of color children, placing race at the center of transgender studies.