Sam Rutherford (he/him)

@echomikeromeo

Lecturer in LGBTQ+ History/History of Sexuality, University of Glasgow. I wrote this book:

1.140 Folgt5.498 Follower596 Posts

Bluesky

Ist das dein Profil?Übernimm es — dann gehört dir echomikeromeo.dirty.social.Profil übernehmen

Sam Rutherford (he/him)@echomikeromeo· 24d

It's giving

Conservative Party campaign poster from the 1987 general election. Text: 'Is This Labour's Idea of a Comprehensive Education?' Image of three books with titles 'Young gay & proud' 'Police: Out of School!' and 'The playbook for kids about sex'. Text: 'Take the politics out of education. Vote Conservative'

Cover of the 1980s children's picture book Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin. Blue title text on a yellow background with black and white photos of a little blonde girl and two men in their 30s with brown hair and 80s haircuts.

Sam Rutherford (he/him)@echomikeromeo· Jun 24

Does anyone else ever have the feeling that literally nothing about popular discourses of sex and gender has changed in the last century? Daily Mirror, 2 May 1934:

advert for vitamin tablets marketed in sex-differentiated formats to men and women, claiming 'rejuvenating' properties. The headline reads, 'The Dawn of a NEW Vitality'

Sam Rutherford (he/him)@echomikeromeo· May 31

Happy 207th to Walt Whitman!!!!

24.
I hear it is charged against me that I seek to destroy institutions;
But really I am neither for nor against institutions,
(What indeed have I in common with them?—Or what with the destruction of them?)

Only I will establish in the Mannahatta, and in every city of These States, inland and seaboard,
And in the fields and woods, and above every keel little or large, that dents the water,
Without edifices, or rules, or trustees, or any argument.
The institution of the dear love of comrades.

Sam Rutherford (he/him)@echomikeromeo· May 19

Hot off the press - congrats, @mrobinsonrhodes.bsky.social! And what a fab cover!

Martha Robinson Rhodes’s book Bisexuality and Beyond: A History of Multiple-Gender-Attraction in Modern Britain. The cover image is a stylised letter B in the bi flag colours.

Sam Rutherford (he/him)@echomikeromeo· May 9

Daily Mirror, 14 Sept 1922:

Newspaper article that reads:
MALE AND FEMALE.
“SEX metamorphosis” is the latest sensational prediction of scientists at the British Association.
Dr. Crew, who recently discovered a means of transforming hens into cockerels, has now assured an interviewer that “the
same theory could be applied to human beings."
This means presumably that it will be
possible, before long, for all children to decide, when they have reached a certain age, whether they will, for the future, be boys or girls.
Seeing that nearly all girls, at a certain stage, wish that they were boys, whereas hardly any boys, at any stage, wish that they were girls, it looks as if we had here a solution of the problem of the superfluous
woman, and a substitution for it of the problem of the superfluous man.
Much will depend, however, upon whether the method of effecting the change is a cheap and simple or a costly and elaborate process.
If the former, all sorts of surprises may be in store for us; but if sex metamorphosis is to be only the luxury of millionaires, then the world will go on pretty much as before.

Sam Rutherford (he/him)@echomikeromeo· Apr 24

My review of The Log Books is in the May issue of @historytoday.com! A delight to spend time with such a rich & engaging text.

Header of a book review in a print magazine. Hed says SOCIAL - PHONE-IN and dek says the book’s publication info. There’s an image of the cover of the book.

Sam Rutherford (he/him)@echomikeromeo· Apr 11

Happy belated birthday to Paul Robeson, one of my heroes! Here he is in my local park in 1960! www.greatergovanhill.com/latest/when-...

Black and white photo of Robeson on a stage, singing to a densely packed crowd seated in rows outside in Glasgow's Queen's Park.

Sam Rutherford (he/him)@echomikeromeo· Apr 1

This year, not everyone is free. Next year, may everyone be free!

A seder plate, with beetroot standing in for the shank bone, and an orange and an olive alongside the usual components.

Sam Rutherford (he/him)@echomikeromeo· Mar 2

Super exciting to see this in the flesh! This was such a side project for me but I got so much from it and loved having the opportunity to do it!

The first page of my chapter in this edited volume, Chapter 8: Contestations

Two photos from the chapter, of young women in the 1920s wearing white lab coats and working in a “scientific laundry”

Sam Rutherford (he/him)@echomikeromeo· Feb 16

Sneak preview of new material! If you want to hear more you can come along next Friday 27th in Edinburgh - details here: hca.ed.ac.uk/updates-even...

Screenshot of Word document:
For the remainder of this talk, I am going to approach the trans past—and Glasgow's trans past in particular—with these questions in mind. Just as the last decade or so has seen the flourishing of trans activism and community in response to the escalation of attacks against us, it has also seen a real efflorescence of academic trans historiography that, in my view, offers us all (not just academic historians) some useful tools for engaging with gender diversity in the past and considering what it might or might not have to do with us today. While I remain sceptical that an expert historiographical perspective will do much to convince the state that we should have rights, I do suspect that populating the past with trans people, and using the resources of academic history to develop complex and nuanced stories about how these people have lived and how we might situate them within the context of their own moments, might offer some useful resources for trans survival, possibility, and getting organised in the present.
In what follows, I am going to return to Frances's and Margaret's stories, and to how we can use some of the tools of academic trans history to make sense of the faint traces of their lives that they've left behind. Though I happened upon Frances and Margaret entirely by chance, it so happens that they are representative of two major strands of current research into the trans history of modern Britain, each with its own source base, methodology, and scholarly debates. I want to suggest that situating Frances and Margaret in the context of this historiography affords four key insights that might be of interest both to academic historians...

Sam Rutherford (he/him)@echomikeromeo· Jan 8

I'm organising a trans history workshop session as part of the @mbsbirmingham.bsky.social conference in July. Details below. Do get in touch by end of next week if you have any questions or would like to register your interest, and pass on to anyone you know who might be keen to participate.

Workshop Session: Modern British Trans History
Modern British Studies Conference, University of Birmingham, 3–5 June 2026

We are seeking expressions of interest for a developmental workshop session in modern British trans history to be held at the Modern British Studies conference in June. Participants will share precirculated papers of between 2,500 and 5,000 words, and discuss these with
each other in an extended-length session as part of the conference programme. They will therefore have the opportunity to receive in-depth feedback in a supportive environment grounded in field expertise, as well as to participate in a wider discussion with fellow modern British trans historians about the state of the field.

Participation is open to researchers working on any aspect of the trans history of Britain, Ireland, and the British Empire since c. 1700. The session is primarily aimed at postgraduate and early-career researchers, but anyone who feels as if they would benefit from the
opportunity to workshop a paper is welcome to register their interest, including historians working outside the academy. If the session is oversubscribed, preference will be given to current PGRs/graduate students.

MBS conference attendees who would like to attend the session without workshopping a paper will have the opportunity nearer the time to register their interest and to receive the precirculated papers.

To register your interest in workshopping a paper in this session, please write to Sam Rutherford (sam.rutherford@glasgow.ac.uk) by 16 January 2026 with a brief indication of your potential paper topic.

Sam Rutherford (he/him)@echomikeromeo· Jan 2

I'm so moved that 41 individuals & libraries have bought my book! The more people/institutions with budget who acquire the hardcover, the more likely it is to go into an affordable paperback. I ofc would also love it if you reviewed it for a journal! Or invited me to speak to your grad students!

Photo of royalties statement, showing 36 print and 5 electronic sales of Teaching Gender.

Sam Rutherford (he/him)@echomikeromeo· Dec 4

Unexpectedly covering a colleague’s class on women’s suffrage this week, a subject I don’t usually teach - reflecting on how it’s a shame that this subject is so often sanitized in public discourse, when it has so much to tell us about political organizing and social movements in the present.

Excerpt from a 1912 speech by Millicent Garrett Fawcett, discussing factionalization and disagreement over tactics

Sam Rutherford (he/him)@echomikeromeo· Oct 26

Delighted and moved by these eloquent advocates for inclusion in sport!

Merle, a new DEW team member says, ‘I joined the team as a new member this year and as a person new to the university. I was appalled to hear of the university’s attempt to regulate the college league and its players on the basis of an oppressive, harmful, and baseless Supreme Court ruling.’

For Sophie, another DEW player: ‘Our team has, and will always be, a welcoming, open, and inclusive space for those who share a passion for football. I am outraged and heart-broken at the decision to exclude trans women from college football. The college league is not affiliated with the FA, so it doesn’t have to abide by those rules. The aim of college football is to spread the joy of the game to those who want to play and provide a community - why on earth would you exclude anyone from this? I and my fellow teammates vehemently refuse the exclusion of our trans siblings, and I will not be part of a system that asks for that.’

Sam Rutherford (he/him)@echomikeromeo· Oct 20

A reminder that if you're in the area it is not too late to join us at the Glasgow Lab for Intersex, Non-Binary and Trans Studies launch event tomorrow afternoon! Register here: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/glints-lau...

'GLINTS: Glasgow Lab for Intersex, Non-Binary & Trans Studies' printed in coral on a lavender background

Sam Rutherford (he/him)@echomikeromeo· Oct 19

A scheduling accident means that I am spending my Sunday prepping *two different* PGT-level intro to trans history class sessions for tomorrow!

Gender, Politics and Power: Trans History
Sam Rutherford

Discussion questions

What have trans approaches offered to gender history?
Is trans history the history of transgender people?
How has trans history engaged with the questions of 'acts vs identities' and 'materiality vs discourse' that have characterised debates in the history of sexuality?
What does trans history tell us about how race and empire have shaped the history of gender?
How can we be responsible practitioners of trans history at a time when trans people are the target of an unprecedented culture war?

Core reading

Kit Heyam, Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender (London: Basic, 2022), Introduction
Kit Heyam, 'Gender nonconformity and military internment: curating the Knockaloe slides', Critical Military Studies 6, no. 3–4 (July 2020): 323–40
Jamey Jesperson, ‘Trans Misogyny in the Colonial Archive: Re-Membering Trans Feminine Life and Death in New Spain, 1604–1821’, Gender & History 36, no. 1 (March 2024): 91–111

Week 5 of my PGT course 'Approaches to Queer and Trans Histories'. The text is too long for the alt text box but the full syllabus is available in pdf form here: https://samuelrutherford.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/hist5193-2025.pdf

Sam Rutherford (he/him)@echomikeromeo· Oct 13

I did not know that Glasgow played a pivotal role in Rocky Horror!

Let’s talk about “Rocky Horror.” Can you describe how you created the look for Frank-N-Furter?

I didn’t really create it myself. I was grimly unaware when I read the role and started to rehearse it that the national costume of Transylvania was a corset and whatever else you put with it. But the costume designer, Sue Blane, had worked with me before in a remarkable repertory theatre in Glasgow, Scotland, called the Citizens Theatre, where we had done a production of “The Maids,” by Jean Genet. I played one of the rather grubby sisters, Solange. And Sue designed that outfit. For “Rocky Horror,” she went to a market in Glasgow called the Barras, where all kinds of crap was sold, and she found a Victorian corset for three pounds. I wore it back to front. [Laughs.]

Sam Rutherford (he/him)@echomikeromeo· Oct 11

Back when trans studies actually *was* relatively new, rather than continually being reinscribed as such! Chronicle of Higher Education, 1998: www.chronicle.com/article/tran...

Dr. Gilbert is among a growing cadre of “trans” people on campuses who are going public. Organizations for gay, lesbian, and bisexual students have already begun tacking a “T” on the end of their names to embrace “transgendered” or “transsexual” students. In the past year, students and professors have also pushed universities to extend protection to transgendered people under policies that prevent discrimination against minorities.

What’s more, work by transgendered scholars is making transgender studies a hot new topic. One of the most important contributions to the field, a transgender issue of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, edited by Susan Stryker, is due out next month from Duke University Press. A flurry of other publications on the topic is expected this spring and summer, and transsexual academics have started an electronic mailing list on the subject. (Those interested in joining the list, called “transacademic,” can send an e-mail message to mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk)

“We are pioneering a new field of scholarship,” says Dr. Stryker, an independent scholar, who changed from male to female in 1991, a year before earning her Ph.D. in history from the University of California at Berkeley. “This whole area is going to become an increasingly big social concern over the next decade.”

Sam Rutherford (he/him)@echomikeromeo· Sep 29

No idea if the students will connect with this, but moved all over again by teaching it today:

P. 3 of Eve Sedgwick’s essay “Queer and Now,” where she talks about reading as a space for forging queer identity

Sam Rutherford (he/him)@echomikeromeo· Sep 12

As the only academic historian employed in a UK university who has 'LGBTQ+' in my job title, I think about this a! whole! lot!

Recent stories about job adverts requiring applicants to explicitly commit to principles, which were withdrawn because they contradicted Office for Students advice, underlined how EDI had assumed an outsized influence in university life, continued Pace. “But many appointments – some with highly politicised job titles – have already been made across the sector on this basis.”

Sam Rutherford (he/him)@echomikeromeo· Sep 10

Can't resist the temptation to offer some historical context on this, also! (Rutherford, Teaching Gender, p. 84)

'In the late nineteenth century, of the thousands of students enrolled at universities in cities like Glasgow, Edinburgh, Manchester, Liverpool, and London, half lived at home; of the rest, although women were more likely to live in halls of residence, most men lived in private lodgings. Typical experiences of student life involved a lengthy public transit commute to campus and continuing ties to one’s home community and childhood friends, but also new kinds of independent access to urban leisure spaces.'

Sam Rutherford (he/him)@echomikeromeo· Sep 1

There are plenty of ways to teach 'sexuality' and not all of them involve canonical texts, but I am once again setting out my stall that those who use Foucault might consider using Rubin instead!

The beginning of Gayle Rubin's foundational essay 'Thinking Sex', from p. 4 of the Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader

Sam Rutherford (he/him)@echomikeromeo· Aug 27

Curious to know if this is for Political Reasons (Duke special collections grant) - could any folks in the know email me if they have intel?

'Harry H. Harkins T'73 Travel Grants for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History was offered from 2018-2024 and is currently on hiatus.'

Sam Rutherford (he/him)@echomikeromeo· Aug 25

My favourite Eve Sedgwick quote is never not relevant!

p. 20 of Eve Sedgwick's book Tendencies, containing a joke about the homoeroticism of the western canon

Sam Rutherford (he/him)@echomikeromeo· Aug 24

Astonished to see this very long interview with @rebeccadonkennedy.bsky.social about trans equality in the usually transphobic Herald! www.heraldscotland.com/news/2541309...

'Kennedy adds: “Trans people must be able to access the services everyone needs, and have the same rights to safety, privacy and dignity as everyone else. Clearly, insisting that they’re treated as their biological sex at birth all of the time makes that impossible… There are many court cases happening all across Scotland and the UK that totally lack trans people’s voices – that tell a false, incomplete or stigmatising story of what it means to be trans and what trans people want and need to live good lives.”'

Sam Rutherford (he/him)@echomikeromeo· Aug 14

This semester almost all my teaching is PGT, so in that context essentially yes - here's the language I'm using for my PGT course (I just want to add in a couple links/references):

Use of Generative AI is not permitted in any of your work for this course. The intellectual and ethical limitations of AI-generated academic work are widely documented. Furthermore, as postgraduate students, it is essential that you practice key advanced historical skills such as reading and synthesising information, compiling bibliographies, and planning essays. Without being able to do these things independently, you will not be able to succeed at more advanced elements of a History master's programme, such as researching and writing a dissertation. I would much rather work individually with you to support you in building these skills, than I would read an essay automatically generated from a large language model. The latter is unlikely to attain the depth and specificity required to receive a good mark on the assessment.

Sam Rutherford (he/him)@echomikeromeo· Aug 11

Really appreciated this!! I have a piece coming out soon(!) that answers the ‘what use trans history in these times’ Q slightly differently (and from the other side of the Atlantic) but there’s a lot here that resonated with me:

Why, then, do we need the past when we have come so far so fast? Two reasons. First, our collective ignorance about the transgender past is being used against us. During oral arguments for the Skrmetti case before the Supreme Court in December 2024, Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked if there was a legacy of discrimination against transgender people. One lawyer hesitated. He might not have known what to say, like most of us who didn’t learn about this in school. He mentioned anti-cross-dressing laws and military ban as two examples, but there is a substantial historic legacy of discrimination. If the leading voices for transgender rights in this country don’t know our history, we are in real trouble. The radical right is counting on this.

Second, we are not so different from the trans people who have come before us—and this fact may well sustain us in the years to come. Most trans people throughout history have lived, loved, struggled, resisted, and persisted without any of the legal protections, family support, social networks, or medical care that are widely available today. On Transgender Day of Visibility in March, pioneer trans theorist Sandy Stone offered a hopeful message: “We’ve taken 10 steps forward. Now we’re about to be beaten five steps back. But at the end of the day, we’re still five steps ahead. That’s how culture works. That’s how progress works…. We’re not going back from that.”

Sam Rutherford (he/him)@echomikeromeo· Aug 5

2. Laurie Marhoefer's concluding comments about where queer historiography is now, a decade after Doan's queer critical history:

These essays refuse that narrow view. They see queer politics as always embedded
within broader political commitments, not necessarily in ways that benefted all queers
or that led to a queer liberation that we would like to see (Hirschfeld’s commitment to
eugenics, for example). They fnd queer and trans people in the past but also centre
questions of politics and power. As someone who began to work in this feld when
a narrower approach was standard, I fnd it heartening to see, twenty years later, all
of these younger scholars working in the other mode of queer and trans history, the
more expansive and critical mode. Ten years ago, Laura Doan published a powerful

call for a queer critical history.80 That critical practice was not, however, what you see
here—what defned that practice was a fascination with the historical nature of identity
categories. If you ask me, the foundational problem in the feld was not that we were
approaching the archive with an ahistorical notion of identity, but rather that it was
standard to write histories that excluded whole archives, that left out crucial questions
about power and liberation. It is this other critical queer history, an expansive interrogation of power and exclusion, that has, in fact, drawn the new generation of scholars.

Sam Rutherford (he/him)@echomikeromeo· Aug 5

1. Some thoughts from Sara Friedman about how Hirschfeld responded to the rise of Nazism, that for me resonate with the current moment:

Screenshot of p. 7 of the article. It's too long an excerpt for the alt-text so I'd recommend just looking it up in the article if the screenshot isn't accessible for you.

Sam Rutherford (he/him)@echomikeromeo· Aug 1

a) don't buy my book from Amazon but b) obsessed that Amazon thinks I'm my 17th-century theologian namesake: