Adventures in Time and Gender

The Narrator plays clips from recordings that they’ve made, interviews with older trans and non-binary people. The interviews start by exploring when people first saw possibility models – trans people in the media. The Narrator asks them about when they found the words to describe themselves. The interviewees share their experiences of navigating the medical system .The Narrator sees the patterns across history and goes back to the question posed in episode one by the warrior woman – why do they need to prove that trans people have always existed? The Narrator realises just how precious and precarious LGBTIQ+ history is, especially the stories of people of colour. The Narrator looks to the future and the importance of exploring our history and telling our own stories.

http://adventuresintimeandgender.org/Suitcase and the The Narrator meet Ulrichs, who explains his theory that labelling and categorising are the route to queer liberation. He says that scientists of the 19th century were giving names to everything in nature so to name something was to recognise it as part of nature and therefore not something you can legislate against. Then they travel to 1930 and meet Magnus Hirschfeld who takes them on a tour of his Institute of Sexology and then to the Eldorado club.The Suitcase was already a Hirschfeld fan. The Narrator isn’t so sure, They prefer more boundaries when it comes to the relationship between doctors and patients. Next they meet Harry Benjamin and Alfred Kinsey who explain how they each developed scales as a way of classifying sexuality and gender. Suitcase tells The Narrator about possibility models – something you only dreamed of and then find out it can actually happen.

http://adventuresintimeandgender.org/A young genderfluid person called The Narrator and a talking, time travelling suitcase go off on an adventure to explore the history of science and gender in the West, specifically the ideas formulated by the sexologists of the late 19th century that still affect trans people living today. They begin their quest by looking for the first ever trans person in order to prove that trans people have always existed but a warrior woman from prehistoric times suggests they ask instead why they need to prove that trans people have always existed.Next they meet some stars of Ancient Greek mythology, Iphis and his Mum, in Ikea and find that stories often become more complicated as they are told and retold over time. Then they travel to 1785 and meet the Chevalier D’Eon. They find that although people from the past have lived lives that we might call trans, they don’t use the same terminology as we do today. Likewise when Bryher tells them about their life, they are happy to be called a boy but not trans. The Suitcase and the Narrator decide to look at the origins of the labels and words we use.

http://adventuresintimeandgender.org/ Teaser trailer for Adventures in Time and Gender, the upcoming time travelling trans history drama podcast series. Performed by a trans and non-binary cast, developed with a group of trans and non-binary young people, written by Jason Barker and directed by Krishna Istha.