This essay on the American literary history of trans before the inception of modern transness examines such practices and their critiques prior to modern technologies and taxonomies of trans subjecthood. By reading slave narratives, poetry, short fiction, and other genres from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries, the chapter unravels the preoccupation with individual figures as trans or otherwise gender diverse in order to highlight how the uneven processes of colonial biopolitics attempt to discipline the messiness of lived collective expressions and embodied experiences. By foregrounding works on transing and gendering by Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and Asian writers alongside writings better known about white gender nonconformity, this chapter unsettles the racial innocence of transness and triumphalist claims about gender variance as universal. Through attending to structures that produce embodied legibility and practices of meaning-making, the aim is to orient readers to historically informed and theoretically nuanced ways of reading American literature before the twentieth century against tendencies to approach transness through the overrepresentation of whiteness.

Nonbinary people are those who do not self-identify within the gender binary system. Recently, scientific research has increasingly recognized that nonbinary individuals have specific social and health needs, which may be different from those of binary transgender people. Obstetricians and gynecologists (Ob/Gyns) are paying increasing attention to transgender clients, who are in need of care services for either screening purposes, genital complaints, or information on genital health maintenance. However, since the nonbinary population has only recently been acknowledged in legal, medical, and psychological systems, most Ob/Gyns are likely to be unaware of specific nonbinary clients’ particular experiences and challenges. For this reason, in accordance with an affirmative, individualized, and culturally competent approach, this chapter addresses the health needs and physical complaints of nonbinary individuals, by focusing on two main issues: (1) how an affirmative environment for nonbinary clients may foster the therapeutic alliance; and (2) which are the specific physical complaints of nonbinary clients within Ob/Gyn care.

Identifying and quantifying sex differences and similarities has been a central research question and fascinated scientists for centuries. A large body of work has been accumulated on this topic; however, conclusions are often drawn as if they are applicable across cultures even though studies have predominantly relied on Western samples. This chapter reviews cross-cultural literature on several early childhood sex differences in domains of development that have caught attention in the literature recently: gender-typed play, gender identity, and gender expression. We also offer an overview of possible influences on sex differences, including evolutionary, biodevelopmental (genetics, sex hormones, and immune factors), and sociocultural mechanisms (socialization and macro-cultural factors). Given that a cross-cultural perspective has often been lacking in this literature, this chapter reviews research on early gender development in males and females from Western populations as well as the non-Western populations wherever possible to highlight important cultural (in)consistencies.