- Elagabalus (c. 204–222 CE, Roman Empire)
Roman emperor who reportedly preferred to be called a woman and requested surgery to transition.
Ancient sources like Cassius Dio describe Elagabalus as dressing in women’s clothing and seeking gender-affirming treatment.
- The Hijra of South Asia (Ancient to Present)
A recognized third gender in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal for thousands of years.
Hijras often undergo ritual castration and live in communities with spiritual and cultural roles.
They are mentioned in ancient Hindu texts like the Kama Sutra.
- Two-Spirit People (Pre-colonial Indigenous North America)
Indigenous cultures across North America recognized people who embodied both masculine and feminine traits.
The term “Two-Spirit” is modern, but many tribes had their own terms and roles, often spiritual or societal.
- Chevalier d’Éon (1728–1810, France)
A French diplomat and soldier who lived publicly as a woman for the last 33 years of their life.
Possibly one of the first Western Europeans to openly live a trans or gender non-conforming identity in elite society.
19th to Early 20th Century
- We’wha (1849–1896, Zuni Nation, U.S.)
A Zuni lhamana (a traditional third gender role among the Zuni people).
Lived as a woman and was a respected cultural ambassador to Washington, D.C. in 1886.
- Albert Cashier (1843–1915, United States)
Irish-born Union soldier who lived as a man and fought in the U.S. Civil War.
Continued to live as a man until being outed late in life.
- Magnus Hirschfeld (1868–1935, Germany)
Not trans himself, but a key figure in early transgender advocacy.
Founded the Institute for Sexual Research in Berlin, where some of the first gender-affirming surgeries were performed.
Advocated for what we now consider transgender rights.
Mid to Late 20th Century
- Christine Jorgensen (1926–1989, United States)
The first American widely known for undergoing gender-affirming surgery (in Denmark, 1952).
Her transition sparked national media coverage and brought trans issues into public consciousness.
- Marsha P. Johnson (1945–1992, United States)
A Black trans activist and key figure in the Stonewall uprising of 1969.
Co-founded Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) with Sylvia Rivera.
- Sylvia Rivera (1951–2002, United States)
Latina-American trans activist, involved in early LGBTQ+ rights struggles.
Advocated especially for poor and trans people of color, often left out of mainstream gay rights movements.
Trans Histories in Non-Western Cultures
- Fa’afafine (Samoa)
A traditional third gender recognized in Samoan society.
Fa’afafine are assigned male at birth but take on female gender roles and expressions.
- Kathoey (Thailand)
Often referred to as “ladyboys” in the West (a term not always respectful).
Have been part of Thai society historically, though modern visibility varies in acceptance.
Literally the first books the NAZIs burned.
Explanation: Of course, in reality, while transgender is a modern category, phenomena which we would regard, in the modern day, as fitting into this category are widespread throughout recorded history.
There is actually a pretty good history of trans people, though? Like there were a lot of them. Androgyny dates back to the ancient era, perhaps near the start of recorded history.
Yep. The joke is that historians would have to burn all those records in order for the chud’s claim to fit, not that historians have burned all records of trans people.
Good luck burning sumer lol
It’s not our fault conservatives can’t read between the lines in cuneiform.
Is it offensive to suggest that gender dysphoria, homosexual orientation, etc, while natural in the sense of not being someone’s choice, are perhaps dramatically more prevalent than random chance over the past century due to environmental contaminants and modern diets during pregnancy and early human development? I recall reading a recent study about rodents born with iron deficiency exhibiting cross-sex traits.
Is it offensive to suggest that gender dysphoria, homosexual orientation, etc [… are] due to environmental contaminants and modern diets?
Without evidence? Yes. Intersex genetic changes in mice =/= development of transgender people. There is tremendous evidence of gender fluidity throughout history, and tremendous evidence of oppression and silencing of transgender expression throughout the past century (and beyond).
Transgender people still only make up about half a percent of all humans, in a global population that has skyrocketed, globalized, and connected on this issue via digital expression and propaganda amplification.
If, by God if, developmental environment increases the likelihood of being transgender, that would require a long and arduous process of scientific discovery, and is not a suggestion one should make lightly based on a single study of rats.
A hypothesis about a minority’s entire existence and prevalence that has very little scientific evidence but a massive body of anthropological evidence against it is best left for scientific pursuit, not social media.
That study showed the offspring of iron deficient mice were more likely to exhibit intersex traits.
There are more openly gay and trans people now because you’re generally not allowed to shoot, drown, burn at the stake, institutionalise, lobotomise, chemically castrate them willy nilly any more.
Ask an elder queer (to my horror as a gen x i am becoming one) and the percentages have. Not. Changed. There’s just less of us hiding.
And you wanna know where the older ones went in the current population? Google a little thing called AIDS
It reminds me of the prevalence of left-handedness in the US. If you look at a chart, left-handedness absolutely exploded in the early 20th century, going from 3% of the population up to 10%. But it’s stayed at 10% for about 8 decades now.
No one actually thinks more of the population suddenly became left-handed and then stabilized. It was a combination of underreporting and forcing left-handed children to write right-handed.
Same as with any difference that can be hidden. We don’t have more autistic people now; we’re just better at recognizing that the guy that spent his entire life photographing snowflakes might’ve just lived before we had diagnostic tools or a cultural understanding of special interests and the autism spectrum.
I would say that the offensiveness is more in the dubiousness of the specific claim.
Environment influences all aspects of the human condition, so it would be unreasonable to completely discount changing environmental standards.
However, considering the nature of the oppressiveness of past polities and the emphasis on conformity, and especially in Western and Islamic countries which were dominated by Abrahamic faiths which put a high moral value on sexual conformity, it seems premature to want to assert that there is a biological reason for the increase in visibility of LGBTQ+ folk in the modern day. The combination of the extreme individualism and iconoclasm of liberal society, the departure from faith as the cornerstone of morality, and greatly improved recording practices seem much more likely culprits.
For example, in the society of the Roman Empire before Christianity’s rise, wherein conformity was highly valued but sexual behavior was not core in moral valuations, only some ~25% of the first 200 years’ worth of Emperors were heterosexual, as we would recognize it. There are an immense number of comparisons of a similar type in societies we have records of.
And, for that matter, iron deficiency was much more widespread in the past than in the modern day, quite provably, both by direct evidence and inference from diet. So that particular route is especially improbable.
Not disagreeing with any points you have made but speaking in reference to the environmental pollutants;
It’s my understanding that both microplastics and PFAs are endocrine disprupters either directly or indirectly, which may have an effect during development and long term, does that actually matter when it comes to how an individual wishes to present or live their life? I don’t think so.
Interestingly, there are other naturally occuring endocrine disrupters such as certain mycotoxins that humans have basically always had to deal with.
Listen if you want to clean up the microplastics and PFAS I’m on board. If, queer people are accepted and our rates go down from doing that its not like there’s going to be mass movements of us to repollute. But even in your hypothesis it’s a developmentally induced condition so once we’re here we ought to be treated well.
It’s more openly common because you’re statistically less likely to get hate crimed on the spot for it (though how long that lasts remains to be seen)
Same thing happened with the gays in the 60s and 70s all of a sudden there were “a lot more of them”
Theres wasnt though, there was the same amount before as there were after, they just stopped forcing themselves into unhappy marriages or living their entire lives alone in the closet
Count dongulus has caught onto the fact that all of us transgenders are secretly rodents!
Everyone disperse!
I can see where they’d get the idea, though they really ought to realize that rat tails do not necessarily mean rodent. Trans folks are obviously marsupials.
