Panel at the American Historical Association Annual Meeting

     Two flashpoints in the current conservative cultural backlash in the United States are transgender rights and abortion, and the politics of sex and reproduction have been in the news on an ongoing basis. History provides a reference point on both ends of the political spectrum in debates on these topics: liberals declare, “we won’t go back!” and conservatives want to “make American great again.” The politicized historical narratives, by turn romantic and tragic, are compelling and politically useful, but they miss some crucial insights from history. First, historical actors grappled with problems of sex and reproduction in complex and nuanced ways that tend to be ignored in politicized narratives of the past. Second, the visions of what it would mean to “go back” do not recognize that, in fact, there is no going back: social, cultural, and technological conditions have shifted, and the very self-awareness of past and present possibilities…