One of the earliest moments when I realized that my approach to history has been crippled by the available categories can be traced to the way Transgender China (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), the first book I edited, was received. Specifically, some Anglophone readers criticized the ways in which the term transgender was used to describe a range of phenomena in Chinese culture that they did not deem sufficiently genuine to the concept as it is understood in the West. Many of the examples discussed in Transgender China were simply not "trans enough"
for these readers. For a field that was just beginning to acquire shape and foundation, I was surprised by the degree of boundary policing imposed by its interlocutors. Perhaps I should not have felt so dismayed, but those reactions pushed me to think harder about the promise and limitations of transgender discourse.

— Transtopia in the Sinophone Pacific by Howard Chiang (1%)