Rita Santos’s Beyond Gender Binaries: The History of Trans, Intersex, and Third-Gender Individuals opens with a bold and compassionate mission to remind readers that gender diversity is not a modern invention but a timeless reality woven through human history. Santos dives into the deep and often overlooked history of gender variance, exploring how people across time and cultures have lived, loved, and existed beyond the narrow categories of male and female. She writes with an awareness that while societies may have used different terms, gestures, or rituals to describe gender-nonconforming individuals, the essence of those experiences has always been part of humanity’s story.
From ancient civilizations to contemporary movements, the book traces how concepts of gender have been understood and redefined. Readers are taken on a journey through societies where gender diversity was celebrated as sacred and others where it was punished or erased. Santos highlights, for example, the revered roles of two-spirit people among Indigenous nations in North America, the hijras of South Asia who have existed for centuries as a recognized third gender, and the sworn virgins of the Balkans who challenged gender norms for social or familial reasons. Through these stories, the author shows that gender variance is neither new nor rare, but an enduring thread in the fabric of human life.
