All About Yves

Yves Rees' memoir, All About Yves, is subtitled Notes from a Transition, and it's a fascinating and often moving account of a search for identity. Yves' story is very relatable; they are a Melbourne person, they hang out on the north side of the river, work at La Trobe University, and went through the gruelling Covid lockdowns of 2020 and 2021. I was very impressed by the nuances of their journey, and the pressures from all sides to conform to gender stereotypes -- including transgender stereotypes! Yves describes a crucial assessment from a psychologist during which they felt obliged to downplay the fact that they were not particularly 'tomboyish' as a child, playing with Barbies and dressing up in sparkles, because in order to be judged as 'properly' trans, the conventional narrative is that one is supposed to reject all things from the assigned gender as early as possible.

Yves has tried on various identities -- straight, lesbian, transmasc, non-binary -- before settling on simply 'trans.' I loved the way they describe trans as resisting all the boxes, not necessarily on the way to a particular destination, but forever travelling. It was interesting to read about their struggle with feminism, having worked as a feminist historian, and then wrestling with what it meant to reject the identity of 'woman' in that context (fortunately it is possible to be a feminist without being a woman).

All About Yves is a nuanced, thoughtful and engaging account of one person's story -- a story that's not over yet. It gave me a lot to think about.