What exactly do you mean when you say 'Trans people have always existed'?

[RainWithSunnySpells]

I'm hoping that people who genuinely believe this will explain it to me.

I would like to know:
(1) how are you defining 'Trans'?
(2) what is the evidence that convinced you that this was 'always' the case?

I just want to understand this phrase as it genuinely confuses me and I saw it again on a current and sensitive thread that I do not want to derail.

Thanks to everyone who answers.

Have you ever come across that Richard Feynman quote, “If you can’t explain something in simple terms, you don’t understand it."?

I don't know if it always holds true, but it's certainly a good habit to get into - to explain your beliefs to other people. That's when you spot the flaws in your reasoning or the gaps in your knowledge.

Telling someone to go read some books on the topic means you miss that opportunity. It also raises the question why this is something that can't be explained fairly easily, at least in a rough way.

Many Hijra are sex workers but that wasn't the case pre colonialism. The Christian British couldn't accept the Hijra so they became criminalised and although the laws changed the loss of status for the Hijra continued.

Do you mean Eunics? Eunics are either born hermaphrodite or castrated very, very early as babies. Nothing to do with "feeling". 100% to do with lack of testosterone.

Perhaps people in the past wanted to be the opposite sex because of societal expectations.

That shouldn’t be the case anymore- people can do any job, hobby… wear pretty much whatever they like.

I do not accept the apology from the poster upthread.

I also still think that it is perfectly reasonable to ask for links. When someone has made an assertion and they have been specifically asked about the evidence that convinced them, they should be happy to back up the assertion and also share the evidence. It's the point of the thread!

If someone is not happy to do either, no one is forcing them to participate in this thread.

Given that you've referenced them, it's reasonable to expect you to have links to at least some of these sources you're citing. Otherwise how can we know they exist? Where did you read them?

Arundhati Roy’s historical novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness is partially about hijra (hermaphrodites and gender non conforming folk) in India. There’s also Greek myth - Tiresias who is changed from woman to man - which reappears in modern novels like Angela Carter’s The Passion of New Eve, or Jeffrey Eugenides’s Middlesex. Fiction yes but it shows these ideas have been around a long time.

Like a previous poster I think there have always been people who don’t conform to the gender expectations of particular cultures (what we now call transgender). There have also always been hermaphrodites (people of indeterminate sex). Transsexuals are a relatively new phenomenon (people who have undergone a surgical operation to alter their sex). The modern umbrella term “trans” seems to mostly refer to gender non conformity (and bizarrely equates gender with sex) whilst also working to argue that sex and gender are the same (instead of terms for biology and behaviour respectively).

So the discourses about sex and gender are far from new, far from a trend, and actually getting more rigid and narrow than they used to be in some ways!

@Mermoose Or indeed, even name one of these books or authors of which there are loads and everyone who isn’t a terf knows all about.

IWasAFool

True. Pre colonisation they held various roles in government and households.

I wonder how the rate of those who have their sex organs removed has changed over time.

I think they probably just were a bit confused by the idea that one could give links to the vast history of human culture in which these issues have been discussed.

Susan Stryker is the person to read on C20th American transgenderism. But I don’t have sources to hand for Indian, Native American or African ethnography on gender/the third sex/what we’d now call trans issues but have been around a long time. Although I know the work is out there!

Ok, fair enough. Never managed to
work links out but if you take a look at The Getty Museum there’s a really interesting article about trans people in antiquity.

The “Galli” are also commonly recognised. Multiple resources online under that term.

This is an interesting read: Bones without Flesh and (Trans)Gender without Bodies: Querying Desires for Trans Historicity (Cambridge University Press).

Sorry, again tried to link but failed abysmally! There are countless other credible documents available online for those who are interested.

I’ve no political interest in this, purely anthropological.

In some cases the gender nonconformity itself was a result of social expectations. Take the example of Albanian sworn virgins, a custom that arose in farmer families without male heirs. So not a case of the girls' "tomboy" character driving the new role (although apparently many of them were all too happy to escape the restricted female roles.)

Transgender History is still probably the best starting point.

Eunuchs. Don't forget eunuchs. In Mesopotamia and, later, Persia, they were definitely not castrated as children. They were hulking great fighters, sometimes slaves and sometimes not, who underwent castration in order to get a really cushy post in the royal personal guard corps.

Being castrated, they were seen as safe to be around the women. There are strong hints that some had sexual relationships with royal wives and concubines. I don't know whether the royal men were so hung up on machismo that they didn't notice, or didn't care because a eunuch couldn't impregnate a woman, or if they minded very much and had them killed.

I've seen them described as "trans". Suspect that would have earned you a swift blow to the neck with a eunuch's scimitar.

I’ve no political interest in this, purely anthropological

It is interesting from an anthropological point of view, I v much agree.

People aren't objecting to the existence of people not fitting regressive gender norms. Quite the opposite!

The problem, for those of us for whom it is political, is when these other cultures are appropriated to insist women's spaces be opened to some men. Despite the fact this often isn't the case in these other cultures. And overlooking the fact these cultures are usually more rigid with gender stereotypes, therefore less accepting of homosexuality and women's freedom.

Probably hard to work that out. Another question would be how many have died from quite brutal surgery carried out without the sort of medical training/equipment/antibiotics we have now.

Two sexes have always existed. One of (mostly) which seem to enjoy subjugating the other and finding new ways to do it.

I'd like to see more answers to the OP's first question:

How are you defining 'Trans'?

Before we can get onto the question about whether so-called "trans people" have always existed, we need to have some sort of definition or description of what a "trans person" is. What makes a person "trans"?

Well, 'trans' is a new concept but there have always been people who have lived their lives as the opposite sex. Usually women who fought in wars or were doctors, who wanted to do something not open to them.

Daphne du Maurier was probably 'non binary'. She had huge confusion about the fact she had a male side 'the boy in the box'. She tried having sexual relationships with women but that didn't hit the spot for her, it was around her gender, not her sexuality.

I've recently seen old ( Victorian) photographs of men dressed as women as a serial fetish. I know Eddie Izzard gets a lot of hate, but he has always said part of him wants to be a woman. 20 odd years ago he said he was a transvestite but I expect he was struggling to define himself.

I absolutely think that wanting to be a different gender is a thing but certainly not on the scale it is now.

What really pisses me off is people defining me as 'cis'.

They won't have been referred to as 'transmen' and 'women' though. It would have been some other term used for the 'third gender ' people that existed at the time. Usually gay or lesbian men and women who were non conforming with societal expectations of their sex in countries and/or and at a time when homosexuality was totally unacceptable.

Even in India the Hirja are not really seen as women; and they are not really revered at all. They often have to rely on begging and prostitution to survive.

That is because 'trans' is just the word that is given to people who are non conforming in one way or other, who who prefer to present as the opposite sex for whatever reason.

There are multiple mentions of hermaphrodites on this thread but that doesn't happen in humans. People with DSDs are either male or female, not both.

Well, 'trans' is a new concept but there have always been people who have lived their lives as the opposite sex. Usually women who fought in wars or were doctors, who wanted to do something not open to them.

That's not the same as the current 'trans' fad though, is it? A woman can just go and join the army or go to medical school if she wants to do those things now. And there's no evidence that those women in the past would have pretended to be men if they could have done those things as women.

Daphne du Maurier was probably 'non binary'. She had huge confusion about the fact she had a male side 'the boy in the box'. She tried having sexual relationships with women but that didn't hit the spot for her, it was around her gender, not her sexuality.

If you don't want people to call you 'cis', it's probably better not to label others as things like 'non-binary' which didn't even exist when Daphne du Maurier was alive. A woman who doesn't want to be defined by narrow gender stereotypes isn't 'non-binary', she's just a normal woman. What is a 'male side' anyway?

Do they actually use the word "trans"? In India? 🤔

Or do you just mean castrated men?

Gender non-conforming people are not always trans. Trans means you actually believe you're the opposite sex. So it's more of a religion.