These social and medical discussions helped to advance the visibility of transgender identity and to bring it into the public sphere. Efforts to clearly differentiate gender into its own subject were seen through the actions of people like Magnus Hirschfeld and groups like the self described androgynes that made up the Cercle Hermaphroditos. During this period, the ideas of sexuality and gender, homosexuality and transgender specifically, were not as clearly defined and often were assumed to be synonymous or at least closely related. At the same time, the chapter discusses how the earliest forms of the transgender movement began and groups and organizations began to form. The second chapter discusses how the idea of transgender was pathologized from the 1850s through the 1950s by the medical community and how any type of gender nonconformity was treated as an illness. Multiple reviewers noted that Stryker's definition of transgender, as stated in the book as 'people who move away from the gender they were assigned at birth, people who cross over (trans-) the boundaries constructed by their culture to define and contain their gender' forms a historical discussion that allows for a 'history sensitive to a wide range of identities and experiences'.

This chapter also deals with the current arguments and discussions about transgender people. This first chapter is an overview of the topic of gender identity and outlines Stryker's definition of common terms and concepts used throughout the work. An Introduction to Transgender Terms and Concepts Each chapter also features multiple 'breakout sections' that define new terminology used in that chapter. The book is split up into five chapters, most of which deal with a particular period of history. The book was published in 2008 by Seal Press, with a revised edition released in 2017. Transgender History is a non-fiction book by professor Susan Stryker that provides a concise history of transgender people in the United States from the middle of the 19th century to the 2000s.

Transgender history by susan stryker