Great read! It's always important to interrogate our definitions for everything, as they color what we define things as. Trans people have always existed in society, but society has not always had...
Great read! It's always important to interrogate our definitions for everything, as they color what we define things as. Trans people have always existed in society, but society has not always had definitions that make people one gender or another.
probably the first transsex was shortly after the first male/female diversification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilateria#Common_ancestor all the exciting stuff happened 490 million years ago....
probably the first transsex was shortly after the first male/female diversification
all the exciting stuff happened 490 million years ago. the past 210 million years have been kinda a snoozefest... eg. all clownfish are born male. The dominant, largest male in a group will change into a female after the dominant female dies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequential_hermaphroditism
I should clarify that because gender is socially constructed that the above examples don't really get at the same thing. And the word transgender is not exactly an umbrella, universal, term as different, earlier cultures have things similar but don't necessarily identify with transgender identity:
Ultimately, Western terms like gay and transgender overlap but do not align exactly with Samoan gender terms found in the traditional culture of Sāmoa.
So we could probably identify the first transgender based on the first person that really identified with the word "transgender" and wanted to describe themselves by it!
How far back can we verify a "third gender" existing...? Well, we can really only go as far as writing allows. But it looks like even the first people to write things down in Mesopotamia (Sumerians) around 3400 BCE were very aware of "third gender" existing even at that time:
Even if we cannot know for sure the exact gender identities of these individuals and temple members, it is clear that people have been living outside of the gender binary for thousands of years. Throughout ancient Mesopotamia, it is evident that people lived a wide range of gender identities. They may have even been widely known and respected, and perhaps even considered important members and contributors to their communities.
Happy Pride! This is an article from a series they do called Curious Kids, where kids send in questions and get answers from experts. Grandpa instilled in me a love of history and education so I...
Happy Pride! This is an article from a series they do called Curious Kids, where kids send in questions and get answers from experts. Grandpa instilled in me a love of history and education so I appreciated the lesson itself and that it is addressing kids. There isn't a lack of curiosity or limit of intellectual capabilities preventing kids from understanding gender identities and trans folks. Learning about gender won't just help them understand the world around them, but also themselves.
Thanks for posting, that was really interesting. I'd never heard about this Which led me to this. TLDR: Transgender prophet stoner priestesses. Which is almost definitely going to be the coolest...
Thanks for posting, that was really interesting.
I'd never heard about this
In the fifth century B.C.E., two Greek authors – Herodotus, known as the father of history, and Hippocrates, the father of medicine – wrote about people they call Anarieis from Scythia, a vast ancient territory to the north and west of the Black Sea that today would be part of Ukraine and Russia. Their descriptions of the Anarieis’ gender are similar to the way many people describe trans women today. Their accounts are supported by what we know about Scythia and Anarieis from anthropologists and archaeologists today.
Which led me to this. TLDR: Transgender prophet stoner priestesses. Which is almost definitely going to be the coolest thing I learn about today.
Forgive my ignorance: *describes trans women today *— I have very little experience in the space — is this assigned female at birth but express as male? (My terms might be wrong) or the other way...
Forgive my ignorance: *describes trans women today *— I have very little experience in the space — is this assigned female at birth but express as male? (My terms might be wrong) or the other way around? Assigned male at birth and express as female?
I could look it up, but I learn better from others.
Trans women are (broadly) the latter example. A trick to remembering this is that the term will focus on the identity that the person has now, not who they were perceived to be at birth. That is...
Trans women are (broadly) the latter example. A trick to remembering this is that the term will focus on the identity that the person has now, not who they were perceived to be at birth. That is to say, a trans woman is a woman.
Gender and sex gets more complicated from there too but that's the basic answer.
That link made me want to read the original source cited at the bottom so here's it is (I think). Obviously not as narrowly focused on historical trans people but I'd expect you can find the...
That link made me want to read the original source cited at the bottom so here's it is (I think). Obviously not as narrowly focused on historical trans people but I'd expect you can find the part(s) about them with a text search for "Enarees" or related terms.
Edit: Link you can actually download it from instead of just scrolling without being allowed to see page numbers or copy. I see mentions of Enarees in chapter 8 (Bodies Clothed in Skins; "Gender Fluidity") and chapter 10 (Of Gods, Beliefs, and Art; "Intermediaries"). Some of the language used is kind of outdated from what I understand so I don't feel like posting it here, but there's several other cool details in those sections - women warriors whom Herodotus refers to as "Amazons" but were called "Man-slayers" in the Scythian language; "gender transfer" was apparently more prevalent among the rich members of society; Cunliffe summarizes the Enarees as "shamans born of a deep-rooted steppe tradition in which transgender behaviour was the norm for such people and was believed to endow those who displayed it with great power."
I do have those moments for straight cis people myself, when I'm hanging around my queer friends or online in queer spaces it can make me pause that there are other folks sometimes.
I do have those moments for straight cis people myself, when I'm hanging around my queer friends or online in queer spaces it can make me pause that there are other folks sometimes.
Great read! It's always important to interrogate our definitions for everything, as they color what we define things as. Trans people have always existed in society, but society has not always had definitions that make people one gender or another.
probably the first transsex was shortly after the first male/female diversification
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilateria#Common_ancestor
all the exciting stuff happened 490 million years ago. the past 210 million years have been kinda a snoozefest... eg. all clownfish are born male. The dominant, largest male in a group will change into a female after the dominant female dies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequential_hermaphroditism
I should clarify that because gender is socially constructed that the above examples don't really get at the same thing. And the word transgender is not exactly an umbrella, universal, term as different, earlier cultures have things similar but don't necessarily identify with transgender identity:
So we could probably identify the first transgender based on the first person that really identified with the word "transgender" and wanted to describe themselves by it!
How far back can we verify a "third gender" existing...? Well, we can really only go as far as writing allows. But it looks like even the first people to write things down in Mesopotamia (Sumerians) around 3400 BCE were very aware of "third gender" existing even at that time:
Happy Pride! This is an article from a series they do called Curious Kids, where kids send in questions and get answers from experts. Grandpa instilled in me a love of history and education so I appreciated the lesson itself and that it is addressing kids. There isn't a lack of curiosity or limit of intellectual capabilities preventing kids from understanding gender identities and trans folks. Learning about gender won't just help them understand the world around them, but also themselves.
Thanks for posting, that was really interesting.
I'd never heard about this
Which led me to this. TLDR: Transgender prophet stoner priestesses. Which is almost definitely going to be the coolest thing I learn about today.
Not gonna lie, 2.5 millenia later that still describes most of my friends pretty well...
Forgive my ignorance: *describes trans women today *— I have very little experience in the space — is this assigned female at birth but express as male? (My terms might be wrong) or the other way around? Assigned male at birth and express as female?
I could look it up, but I learn better from others.
Trans women are (broadly) the latter example. A trick to remembering this is that the term will focus on the identity that the person has now, not who they were perceived to be at birth. That is to say, a trans woman is a woman.
Gender and sex gets more complicated from there too but that's the basic answer.
That link made me want to read the original source cited at the bottom so here's it is (I think). Obviously not as narrowly focused on historical trans people but I'd expect you can find the part(s) about them with a text search for "Enarees" or related terms.
Edit: Link you can actually download it from instead of just scrolling without being allowed to see page numbers or copy. I see mentions of Enarees in chapter 8 (Bodies Clothed in Skins; "Gender Fluidity") and chapter 10 (Of Gods, Beliefs, and Art; "Intermediaries"). Some of the language used is kind of outdated from what I understand so I don't feel like posting it here, but there's several other cool details in those sections - women warriors whom Herodotus refers to as "Amazons" but were called "Man-slayers" in the Scythian language; "gender transfer" was apparently more prevalent among the rich members of society; Cunliffe summarizes the Enarees as "shamans born of a deep-rooted steppe tradition in which transgender behaviour was the norm for such people and was believed to endow those who displayed it with great power."
Meanwhile like some days ago I literally forgot cis people were a thing
I do have those moments for straight cis people myself, when I'm hanging around my queer friends or online in queer spaces it can make me pause that there are other folks sometimes.