Respecting historic gender identities — James Barry was born in Cork in 1789 and studied medicine at the prestigious Edinburgh University before rising through the ranks of the medical corps of the British Army. Barry was a humanitarian who sought to improve the lives of those he encountered in his work. He improved access to…

Discovering Bahuchara Mata, Hindu patron of non-binary identities — I’m an angry baby gay. Angry that a rich and varied queer history has been hidden from me. A rigid, puritanical approach to gender and sexuality is not innate, but learned. Humans have been queer and gender-fluid for millennia. …

Subverting the gender binary is not a modern phenomenon. Texts from the 90s are proving particularly useful to me in my journey to uncover queer history. Emma Donoghue’s Passions Between Women was the catalyst for the revelation that there is a much richer history of queerness than I ever imagined…

A journey of re-discovery and re-interpretation As part of my research for a historical fiction novel, I recently ordered a copy of Emma Donoghue’s 1993 work, Passions Between Women. It has been eye-opening. Through it, I have uncovered a queer history I did not know existed. …