Before Trans

Before Trans is a triple biography of three very remarkable French women writers, all of whom preferred men’s clothing and behaved in unladylike ways. The three are Jane Dieulafoy (1850 - 1916), explorer and archeologist; the novelist Rachilde (Marguerite Eymery,1860-1953); and the erotic writer Marc de Montifaud (Marie-Amélie Charteroule de Montifaud,1845-1912). The distinctive feature of this provocative book is the author’s effort to understand these women who chose to defy the boundaries of femininity but lived in a world that was “before trans” – before what we understand today as transgender, where one’s sex and one’s gender self-understanding do not… show more.

In Before Trans, literary scholar Mesch explores the lives and writings of Jane Dieulafoy (1850–1916), Rachilde (1860–1953), and Marc de Montifaud (1845–1912), three authors whose gender non-conformity challenged nineteenth-century notions of French womanhood. Mesch’s sensitive, engagingly written account uses the personal stories of these individuals to reveal how the complicated identity politics of fin-de-siècle Paris were rooted in immutable definitions of sex difference. An original work, and one of the first to examine the history of the modern transgender identity, Mesch’s book challenges us to think more carefully and more critically about sex and its utility as a signifier of… show more.