She/He/They/Me by Robyn Ryle is a fascinating addition to the gender studies oeuvre. It explores how gender is viewed across times and cultures; how gendered expectations are passed down; how gender intersects with race, sexual orientation, medical care, and the workforce; and more.

And, most interesting of all, it does all that in the form of a Choose Your Own Adventure book. There are some brief preliminary paths to explore cultures that recognize more or fewer genders than the “big two” and cultures where gender is not assigned at birth, but the main adventure starts with your birth into the typical US culture.

From there, the paths diverge. Are you assigned male or female or are you intersex? Who’s your primary caregiver? Do you play sports? Each stop on your path provides new insight and a further choice to make along the journey of acquiring gender in the contemporary US.

I went through the book several times, first following a path as close to my real life as possible, then one quite far diverged, then one that seemed most interesting. I ultimately flipped through the whole thing in order to view all the possible pit stops I had missed.

It was fascinating. It’s the kind of book that is both easily accesible to people with little background knowledge of gender studies and is chattily informative enough to interest those well-versed in gender theory. It further tries to be (and often, but not always succeeds in being) inclusive of various often-overlooked identities from intersex to agender to demisexual.

However, there were a few vocabulary choices that I frowned at and a few times where the path options were somewhat problematic.

For example, if your path has you realizing a trans identity as a child/teen with unsupportive parents, you’re put back in the closet – and are never given another chance to come out of it; you follow some variation of the cis path to the end. Many trans people don’t come out until adulthood and that could’ve been explored better.

Overall, though, I would definitely recommend this book. (If only because it might be the only Choose Your Own Adventure book I’ve ever read in which I didn’t suffer a gruesome demise haha).

4.5 stars.

This was a fascinating take on teaching the concept of gender. It's presented in the form of a choose your own adventure novel which is wildly interesting in a nonfiction. For me it fell a little bit short, but it's a really interesting teaching tool.

This book is quite an adventure! It's written in a ''choose-your-own-path-advendture'', and you can jump in between the chapters as you go. I read it chronologically, (because I'm anal like that ;), and that works as well.

This book is informative without being boring, (a tiny bit repetitive for the chronologically reader), and a journey into the anthropological gender studies. Very fascinating!

To be recommended!

This choose-your-own-gender-adventure is an informative and approachable way to unpack gender, sexuality, socialization, intersectionality, and identity. It's a great tool in a lot of ways - for exploring your own identity, for learning about gender in different times and places, and for putting yourself in the shoes of someone with a very different lived experience. The concept of gender can be hard to wrap your head around, and this is such a refreshingly unique way of approaching it. She/He/They/Me is a great introduction for those new to conversations about gender and for those who want to explore what a different world could look like.

This book as an eBook doesn't make any sense. I get the premise, and it was pretty informative as a whole. But there needed to be links to the "Go to ____" parts, because swiping back and forth made it more tedious than fun. I plan to check this one out in physical form eventually, to see if it's easier and more interesting to follow in that format.

I feel weird saying I liked this book, given that it's a very stark and honest look at how different identities intersect and affect quality of life, usually in a negative way. Maybe it's better to say I that I feel like I gained a lot from this book - new knowledge from perspectives I don't live (the Olympics gender tests female athletes?!) and validation from the perspective I do have (bisexual women holla). I did like that the white/straight/cis/male path wasn't condemned or glorified; the book was honest about the privileges that come with that identity, but also honest about the drawbacks of it as well. I really feel that this book has done a good job with what it was trying to do.

"She/He/They/Me" is a non-fiction book that discovers and aims to explain what gender is in today's time and western society. Ryle chose a different way to approach this topic, instead of writing long and academic essays about each definition, you are offered a "choose your own adventure" styled book. As it is with most things in life, your story starts at birth and you can pick weither you are born into the "a time and place where gender exists" or it doesn't exists. Depending on your answer you are lead to a certain chapter where you are met with a question at the end, and so on.

In some of the chapters the choices about your identity are quite literally taken from you: as a reader you are asked at birth which sex you are assigned depending on the length of your genital tissues. Going through the path it become apparent how many of the choices in regards of your gender identity are taken from you.

As an egoist, I tried my own gender story first and discovered that the chapters are mostly accurate. If one overlooks the fact that I live in an European country - Austria - which can differ from another European country such as the Netherlands which was the closest I could get to mine. The experiences explained during my path seemed very familiar, and made sense. Thus, I decided that I could trust the judgement and information and when I had finished my path, I decided to try a completely different path: a gender neutral person, who had been born intersex. Then I had been a gay trans man, and so on. You can spend a lot of time "trying on" different roles and skins.

In doing so you are giving various information, some of which might be new and some could be familiar. While I am familiar with the gender neutral identity, I know very little about being born as intersex. Thus I learned that only two (!) countries in the world forbid gender "corrective" operations on minors - Chile and Malta.

The tone Ryle uses is non-judgmental and factual. In some cases it even struck me as positive - for example: when I had been born as intersex, the first line had been "congratulations! You are perfectly normal" which is not the reaction one would expect.

What this book lacks is a path to go if you pick "gender neutral". In the end, you either end up at a dead end or are given the options of living as a trans person or as a cis-gendered person with different ethnic backgrounds. Despite this, you are able to pick "queer" and "asexual" as a sexual identity along your journey but you are lead back onto the "binary path" pretty quickly.

All in all "She/He/They/Me" by Robyn Ryle provides a different read when it comes to gender roles and identity, it is insightful in some areas, and enables you to explore different roles in completely safety and with no negative influences. Furthermore, it helps to create understanding of different gender identity and roles.

So this was something completely unexpected. I thought this book was going to explain gender in a straightforward, albeit dry manner. Was I wrong. Instead, this book is interactive, choose your own adventure kind of text. "Wait," I hear you say, "Isn't this about gender, how is that even possible?" Wonderful writing and creativity is the answer to that. I can honestly say I have never read a non-fiction like this before, and completely devoured it. It's both informative AND entertaining. The only downside is that if you are working with an ecopy, as I was, you get the distinct feeling that it would be much easier to handle as a physical copy. So I highly recommend you read that instead of on an ereader.

TDLR: Especially interesting if you are interested in a non-traditional, unique take on gender, and the culture that surrounds it.

One of the most fascinating things about this book is the fact that it's written in a choose-your-own-adventure style, leading you through a journey unique to yourself and your choices. I was excited to take two different types of paths: the one that I wished I had taken, and the one I currently lived with. Despite being extremely excited for this book, and hoping it would be as amazing as it sounded . . . it just never lived up to the expectations. It also never lived up to what it promised.

Let me explain something. When I (or probably, anyone) reads "For the Sisters, Misters, and Binary Resisters" on the cover of a book, one would assume that that meant this book would include some decent amount of discussion on people outside of the gender binary. That never happened. Or, maybe I'm being a little dramatic. Of the 160+ chapters, I think about 4 of them discussed anything outside of the gender binary. That was so frustrating, especially because I picked up this book solely because I thought it was going to be about non-binary and transgender people. The cover even implies that it's going to be more about non-binary people than binary people--but there wasn't.

A book that promises to be about non-binary people should be about non-binary people, but instead it was mainly about binary gender roles. It discussed things like women's health care throughout the year, and different experiences you would have in other societies as male or female. When I tried to follow the path I followed, I chose "assigned female at birth" and then "gender identity denied/repressed by family". That led me to a page that read "You'll live as cisgender for now". Okay, that was what I did for a while. But then it never went back to gender questioning. It never went back to the fact that I chose "gender identity denied" and that I was not cisgender. That was so fucking hurtful. Oh, my gender identity was denied by my family? Guess I'll just never live as my actual gender identity.

There were a few things I liked. This book's formatting was interesting, and it was fun to read overall. There were some chapters that were interesting, and I wasn't bored through the whole thing. My biggest problem was just the fact that it promised one thing, and delivered another. That was so frustrating.

Final Rating: ★★★☆☆
Overall?
This book is not what it says it is. It's not what it promises it's going to be. It's a book about gender roles and gender around the world, but it barely goes into gender identity, being trans and/or non-binary, and decides that if you're parents don't accept you, you'll never be out. And that's just harmful.

Would I Recommend?
If you're not looking for a book on gender identity, and instead of gender roles and gender around the world, go right ahead. Also don't go into this book expecting to be accepting if you hadn't been before.

One of the coolest things about this book is the "Choose Your Own Adventure" setup. You can read through the book following all sorts of gender paths, and there are a lot of interesting things to learn. Robyn Ryle calls out inequality and unfair treatment, how gender has been colonized, and she incorporates different beliefs surrounding gender among various cultures and throughout history. It's super interesting stuff! You can tell she's an ally who really and truly cares, and I enjoyed reading the book.

However, if you are not cisgender, you might not be able to follow your own story without running into a dead end. For example, if you arrive at chapter 78, which is about an intersectional approach to gender, the only paths are "man" or "woman" of various ethnicities. If you're nonbinary, for example, at this point you're unable to continue the journey, because all the path available assume a cisgender readership. You'll just have to read the book straight through, which is fine, but not nearly as fun.

If you read through as a trans woman, let's say you get to sexuality and follow the path saying you are straight. That chapter (about being a straight woman) ends by saying finding someone to love will be much easier for you than it is for your lesbian counterparts. Which might be true for a straight cisgender woman, but what an inaccurate statement (sometimes dangerously so) for a straight trans woman. So that was disappointing.

The wording throughout the book is sometimes spot on, super respectful and inclusive, but other times it seemed forgetful, and that, in turn, felt exclusionary. There are many places where a gender binary is assumed, and it would have been just as easy to say "people" instead of "men and women". Some chapters use cringy phrases like "born a man" or "biological woman", but there are plenty of other places where she used "assigned male" or "assigned female". I found myself wishing there was a note from the author laying out the language she was going to use, how she was going to define anatomy and why it would be done that way, and then used consistent language throughout the book.

That being said, I really love how the choices at the end of each chapter are written without language that insinuates choice. It was obvious the only choices here had to do with the adventure-oriented layout of the book, because every identity is worded with strength and confidence: You ARE, you IDENTIFY, you FEEL. You are following a path and listening to yourself, discovering who you are. That was pretty awesome.

So this definitely has an "okay, the author is cis" feel, there are times when it assumes a cis readership, and there are some cringy moments. Those stumbles need to be pointed out so trans and nonbinary readers have a heads up. Overall, though, it's good. The spirit of the book fosters empathy and understanding, celebrates human diversity, and was obviously written with a lot of love.

This is an amazing book. Granted I haven't gotten through it cover to cover, but I have gone through skipping backwards and forwards on those answers that concerned me and I think it's one of the best books on the topic I had the pleasure of reading.

This should be required reading!!! This is so informative and well researched. Amazing! I'm looking forward to recommending this to friends and family.

5* WOW. WOW. WOW. WOW. WOW. What an education.

This book is set out in the style of a kind of snakes and ladders game, is the best way I can describe it. It's practical, but I declined to play and read it from cover to cover.

What a book. It's what I didn't know I needed to read about gender, and it explains things with so many permutations and combinations, and I can honestly say I've come away understanding more gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, queergender, non-binary (for the very first time ever), and much more.

This is a book that people NEED to read. It's one I didn't realise I needed to read, but I am glad I did.

ARC courtesy of Sourcebooks and NetGalley, for my reading pleasure.

This was a great book! I think anyone who works in public libraries should read as much as they can regarding the topic of transgender identity. I really think these books are can make a positive impact on customer service.