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Boston Globe

Think today's anti-trans panic is new? Brandy Schillace's new book tracks its Nazi roots.

In ' Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up 'I knew that there had been a kind of flowering of a very liberal understanding of sexuality' during the interwar period in Berlin, says Schillace, 'but what I didn't understand was how much a part of that science was.' Before the turn of the twentieth century, she added, most scientists believed that human beings made choices about everything their bodies did, guided by their brains and nervous systems. Advertisement When scientists discovered hormones, natural substances that flowed throughout the body, that changed everything, says Schillace. 'If your hormones are responsible for a lot of these things, then that's natural.' No longer could moralists proclaim that only heterosexuality was natural or normal; the emerging science of the young 20th century revealed that no matter a person's sexuality or identity, they were simply born that way. Advertisement Writing the book at a time when rights and freedoms for LGBTQ people are under extreme risk was hard, Schillace says. 'A lot of times I lay on my floor and cried, because it's just uncanny the resemblance to what's happening right now — the same kind of rhetoric. The playbook is very much the same.' And yet, she adds, she hopes that readers will come away from the book with hope. 'This is not a book about the Nazis; it's a book about how they got power, which I think is very instructive. We can look at it and see how people begin to hate and how we can fight it,' Schillace says. 'It's like 'Star Wars.' It's about the alliance, it's about people living authentic lives of joy as an act of radical resistance.' Brandy Schillace will read at 7 p.m. on Friday, May 16, at . And now for some recommendations ... Michele Filgates's ' ' Advertisement Brendan Slocumb always brings his deep understanding and love of music to his news, and his latest, ' Maud Ventura's ' Kate Tuttle edits the Globe's Books section