Yves Rees - All About Yves: Notes from a transition

Praise for

ALL ABOUT YVES

All About Yves is one of those books that will stay with youa smart, intimate and generous memoir of coming-of-age that is always keenly aware of the historical context and lineage, so often hidden, of which it is a part. Rees has a wonderful ability to speak plainlyand engaginglyabout complex ideas, and the ways in which much larger forces make their marks on all of our lives. Above all, it is a book of great heart and gentle intelligence, and one that will mean a great deal to many people.

Fiona Wright, author of The World Was Whole

Rees has given us a gift. Here, they give us euphoria. Their writing is a balm for anyone who has lived on the margins. Rees takes this experience and gives it breath so that we might better understand the essential humanity of our own project; that we are here to love whoever is around to be loved. In the detail, they give us knowledge. In the story, hope.

Rick Morton, author of My Year of Living Vulnerably

A wondrous and searingly honest story of becoming and being trans. A must read for us all. A remarkable memoir that gives readers the space to imagine the other possibilities outside of the gender binary. All About Yves is a powerful act of resistance that will open up new possibilities for readers.

Mandy Beaumont, author of Wild, Fearless Chests

With their winning combination of piercing intelligence, wry humour and raw emotion, Yves Rees has provided a touchstone for anyone who might know, deep down, that they are not living their truthtrans or otherwise. Ultimately, All About Yves reveals all about us: the messy, painful, hungry, joyful, complex condition of being human. Brilliant, brave and paradigm-shifting, this is the book we need now. This book will changeand quite possibly savelives.

Clare Wright, Stella Prize-winning author of The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka

This is the memoir we need right now: thoughtful and truthful, engaging and illuminating, sometimes vulnerable and often powerful, and above all, exquisitely written. Like all good memoirs, All About Yves tells one persons story and creates meaning and questions for us all.

Dr Kelly Gardiner, writer, poet and academic

All About Yves welcomes you into the anxiety and quest of finding ones path in a binary world: An utterly charming and deeply contextualising take on trans identity.

Kaya Wilson, author of As Beautiful As Any Other

Rees welcomes us into the intimate experience of transition by interweaving their coming out story with philosophy, academic thought, and recent politics. Writing with openness and wry honesty, Rees encourages us to embrace the expansiveness and contradictions of nonbinary gender. Youll never be prouder to attend the same gender clinic.

Briar Rolfe, illustrator and comic artist

All About Yves is a deep and messy journey of personal transformation, that sifts through the complexities and the contradictions of living honestly. Yves compels us to move outside stale binaries of thinking and being, that limit not only our imaginations and hearts, but also reproduce legacies of incredible harm and injustice. Reminding readers that we are always in flux, and the real value and richness of living the questions, and following them, wherever they lead.

Sarah Firth, comic artist and writer

We need more books like this in the world. All About Yves has fundamentally transformed how I think about gender. The best writers complicate things and their work is incredibly complex, filled with insight and power and vulnerability and in the end: hope. Should be compulsory reading.

Katherine Collette, author of The Helpline

Dr Yves Rees (they/them) is a writer and historian living on unceded Wurundjeri land. At present, Yves is a lecturer in history at La Trobe University and co-host of the history podcast Archive Fever. Yves was a 2021 Varuna Residential Fellow and was awarded the 2020 ABR Calibre Essay Prize for their essay Reading the Mess Backwards. Yves is a regular contributor to ABC radio and The Conversation, and their work has appeared in the Australian Book Review, Meanjin, Sydney Review of Books, Overland, Inside Story and Archer Magazine. Yves volunteers with Transgender Victoria and is the co-founder of trans writing collective Spilling the T. In 2021, they guest co-edited Bent Street 5.1: Hard Borders, Soft Edges. Yves monograph Travelling to Tomorrow: Australian Women and the American Century is forthcoming with Nebraska University Press. All About Yves is their first book.

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First published in 2021

Copyright Yves Rees 2021

An abbreviated version of Blood Will Tell was originally published by Archer Magazine #14 and online; an abbreviated version of Misadventures in Menswear was originally published by Archer Magazine

Blondie was originally published by Darebin Council

Reading the Mess Backwards was originally published by the Australian Book Review and won the Calibre Essay Prize

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

Allen & Unwin

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Crows Nest NSW 2065

Australia

Phone:(61 2) 8425 0100

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Web:www.allenandunwin.com

ISBN 978 1 76087 931 0

eISBN 978 1 76106 262 9

Set by Bookhouse, Sydney

Cover design: Mika Tabata

Cover photograph: Susan Papazian

To all the trans people who came before, who battled to exist and be seen, and whose efforts made space for me and others to breathe. Thank you for lighting the way.

THIS BOOK WAS WRITTEN IN NAARM, the place now known as Melbourne, on the stolen lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation. Parts were also written on the stolen lands of the Dharug and Gundungurra people, in the place now called the Blue Mountains. I am an uninvited settler on these lands and I pay my respects to Elders past and present. Indigenous sovereignty was never ceded. This always was and always will be Aboriginal land. A proportion of royalties from this book will be donated to the Pay the Rent campaign. I encourage settler readers to also consider paying reparations.

I am indebted to First Peoples in Australia and around the world for opening my eyes to the possibilities of doing gender outside the binary enforced alongside European colonisation. When it comes to gender, as with so many things, First Nations cultures hold deep knowledge that has too often been ignored and violently suppressed.

This book tells one particular trans storyan account of a white professional transmasculine millennial, a settler in urban Australia. This story is by no means normal or typical; in many respects, its atypical. With my well-paid job, white privilege and secure apartment, I am richer and safer than many trans peoplea demographic that experiences disproportionate rates of discrimination, unemployment, homelessness, sexual assault and violence.