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.

Also just to point out the conflation of homosexuality with effeminacy happened in the 19th century in the UK - prior to that, homosexuality was seen as purely masculine. So men dressing as women prior to the 19th century eg on the stage, would have been seen as humorous/risque due to the public flouting of sex roles, but the audience wouldn't have assumed those men were gay.

Nowadays the linking of homosexuality and effeminacy is so automatic it seems 'natural', but just as prior to the 1st Ww, pink was for boys and pale blue was for girls (and no one really knows why it switched), we make a huge assumption that our current culture has always been how it is, but that's not so.

Both sexes have crossed dressed through out history for different purposes - that’s about it.

That's why I put non binary in parenthesis. I'm not defining her as that at all, but that is what it would be called today. If you read Dapphne du Mauriers letters it's very clear that she didn't feel 'normal'. It caused her a lot of anguish over most of her life.

Then there are the women I knew, who opted out of marriage and fashion and doing things for the men in their lives. They went into jobs and professions (often caring, sometimes managerial) they would not have been able to do otherwise, got training and education. They had their hair cut really short, chose anonymous dark clothes that concealed the shapes of their bodies, adopted new, often male names.

But Sister John, Mother Paul, Sister Bernard, Mother Ignatius, Sister Ciaran, didn't think of themselves as men, or as trans.

There is something so white colonialist about 21st century Americans or other anglophones looking at traditional practices in Samoa or Thailand or Albania or India or anywhere else and choosing to slap a label saying 'trans' onto it because they are outside it, and don't understand or respect it, and the money is in 'trans' this decade.

I think you're referring to something I wrote. This might help -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_history

I understand that the effects of the current trans movement, as manifested by TRAs, has had a very deleterious effect on women and girls. And that this has made us very angry and frustrated. I also understand the concept of social contagion and I agree that at least some of the confused teenagers who are currently claiming to be trans, actually are not.

But SOME OF THEM ARE. And really - do we have to descend into hatred? Don't any of the posters on here with their vitriolic comments know any non-gender-conforming people? And even if you don't can you not at least try to understand and empathise?

Above all, why is it absolutely fine for people to be gay, but not trans?? Thirty years ago being gay was widely considered abnormal, perverted and disgusting, and people would be ashamed and horrified if their child came out. Now most people are probably somewhat concerned but overall tolerant and accepting. The shame and horror has attached iteself to trans people instead. See a pattern here?

Of course we need to sort out the clash between our rights and those of aggressive trans groups, and of course it should be decided in our favour. But I really can't stand posters on here who basically don't believe that my gentle, intelligent and completely harmless trans daughter exists, or that she is somehow making it up, attention seeking or mentally ill. She is none of those things and she is here.

And thank you, MrsSkylerWhite. What you said. I probably shouldn't have fed the beast by providing a link. I guess I still hope to get through to at least one person on here.

From the Wikipedia article, I think this is broadly in agreement with a lot of previous posts:
Can there be said to be a "transgender history," when "transgender" is a contemporary term and when individuals in past centuries who would perhaps appear to be transgender from our vantage point might not have conceptualized their lives in such a way?

Just to address another point you made - when you say that of course social contagion is causing some people to believe erroneously that they're trans but that some people are really trans, what do you mean by this? Because I think that's the crux of the issue - what does it mean to be trans, as distinct from being someone who is unhappy with the sex they are?

Humans can’t change sex. So why is it different when a man says ‘I’m a woman’ to when a woman says ‘I’m Jesus’?

No I idea personally but how do you know there weren't?

Life existed before the internet and even books

I think the problem with some 'trans' discourses today is that there is this desperation to claim certain things are right/true, but the claims are often highly confusing or plain illogical.

E.g. "trans women are women" = a statement that is illogical because it both relies on and erases the difference between sex (bodies) and gender (behaviours).

Or "trans people have always existed" - but trans is a modern word that has no 'true' or universal meaning. It doesn't easily map onto different periods in history or different cultures, because it's used in such a specific way today. Then, like many words, it's used differently by different groups, to different ends. Trans people today don't all think the same thing, even.

It's better to acknowledge that there have always been a proliferation of norms, behaviours, categories, bodies, and identities. And that these have always changed over time, and will always change over time.

There is an obit in the Times today of a trans "women" who was an early pioneer. Classic "man trapped in women's body" stuff. Had a sex change. This was 70s. Had to divorce and remarry his wife.

It's a coercive phrase.

It depends on the false notion that there have always been men wandering around dressed up as and 'passing' as women, and we silly little real women just didn't realise it because they passed oh so well. Therefore, why are we suddenly whipping up a 'culture war' and 'toxic debate' about it? We should all calm down and stop being bigots.

In reality, 99.99999999999999999999% of trans identified males can be clocked immediately in person, and the only reason they sometimes look convincing on social media is due to photo manipulation, lighting and angles. So whilst I know that transvestism has been a thing throughout history, I do not believe that the day to day reality of women in centuries past (before photoshop, plastic surgery and weapons-grade make-up) involved interacting with cross dressed men and fully believing them to be women.

So, it's a phrase intended to gaslit and coerce. "You've never had a problem with it before...why have you got a problem with it noooowwww?"

Exactly.

Believing in trans ideology means believing that the category of sex is irrelevant (not always born out by actions: see surrogacy and Owen Jones when asked about cunnilingus); believing in self ID; and believing that all of the safeguarding previously afforded females and all of the initiatives to promote equity for females should now be granted instead to those who declare woman gender.

Being trans usually means belief in the above PLUS having declared one's trans id.

Lots of gender non conforming people don't believe the ideology and don't declare an identity.

Transexuals 20 years ago declared the identity but IME didn't believe the whole of today's ideology. It is doubtful that 3rd genders from other cultures would believe in modern western trans ideology either.

And double doubtful that brave women from history dressing up as men in order to achieve what was otherwise denied them would have agreed that one's sex was irrelevant when it was the very thing preventing them living like men. The actual reality of their lives bears little in common with the average middle class NB identified woman today.

You can't assume anything about how she might identify if she was still alive today. The world was different in the mid 20th century and she might not have felt the same way if there hadn't been such strict constraints on what was expected of her as a woman.

I haven't read du Maurier's letters so I have no idea what she said herself. But at that time it was expected that a woman should marry, have children and give up work. A woman of her generation who felt she didn't want to follow that path or that she was a lesbian or bisexual would have had a much harder time than a woman born 50+ years later.

The current NB trend is just 'look at me I'm special' and 'not like other girls'. We can all be who we want to be without opting into special gender identities. You can't apply the trend for special 'look at me' special gender identities to people in the past who didn't want to conform to stereotypes which were much more rigidly enforced back then.

There is an obit in the Times today of a trans "women" who was an early pioneer. Classic "man trapped in women's body" stuff. Had a sex change. This was 70s. Had to divorce and remarry his wife.

Do you mean Elizabeth Morris? Did you read the obituary?

Not even a link - I'd like to know the specific words used and the comparative philology.

As a former student and teacher of ancient languages I know that translating words relating to sexual activity and gender presentation are notoriously difficult in the Indo-European family. (The words for biological sex, unsurpirisngly, are very straightforward.)

For example Ancient Greek (5th century, Athenian) has a word which variously has been translated as courtesan, prostitute, girlfriend or whore and it can mean any of these things but the context and time period is everything. As those statuses are clearly not socially equivalent.

Pre-classic Ionic Greek has a word which can mean eunuch, effeminate male, or gay male and again, highly dependent on context.

So it's not enough to @Fiery30 to claim what she said. We linguists need the word, its aetiology, its cognates and relatives, and most importantly its comparative usage diachronically in order to test the veracity of her claim.

Knowing a little of Sanskrit literature, I bet the word in question actually means 'eunuch'.

Apologies. Yes, Elizabeth Morris she was married to the "reassignment pioneer" Jan Morris.

There are clear historical references to men in particular wearing clothes associated with females. There are also societies which have provided acceptable roles for people, usually but not always, men, who do not fit into the social roles prescribed for their sex. I personally believe that gender identity disorder has probably always existed amongst a small cohort.

However, it is not appropriate to impose the very recent western creation of ' 'trans' and historically retro-fit this onto past times and people. Trans is a concept that has been invented and is based on a belief that everyone has a gender identity, and, further, that gender identity is more important than sex in how we organise society.

There are historical records of people who live in roles outside of those prescribed for their sex. There are records of people living in roles associated with the opposite sex. There are records of men wearing women's clothes. What we don't know is WHY these people were doing this. For women in particular, being able to adopt a male identity enabled them to escape very limiting roles that were prescribed to women, including being expected to marry a man. For lesbians, this may have given them a 'cover' to enable them to live in a lesbian relationship. We certainly cannot look back and define these people as Trans, and it is clearly ideologically motivated, and bad scholarship, to do so.

I would add that Trans, in terms of it describing people whose gender identity does not match their sex, is not an evidenced concept which is accepted as ' 'fact'. So it makes even less sense to retrofit this unevidenced, unproven, contested concept and term onto people from history.

They mean eunchs in asia. But it’s important to know that even there they were known as castrated men and they were very much male - eg most would be warriors or protectors even if they were expected to behave as women in the bedroom. Sex with an eunuch was still considered wrong.

In Indian mythology the only ‘trans woman’ mentioned was a male warrior reincarnated into a woman but this probably a story from the vedas (that talked about female warriors in prehistoric times) being warped deliberately by later patriarchial eras.

That would be like saying goths have always existed. People have always existed who liked certain themes, but goth is a modern cultural label.
The same as trans. People have always existed who didn't like stereotypes, but the social trend of then building an appearance/style/persona based on it is a modern cultural label.

That's interesting. I saw a short video about these women. It did not mention it being to solve the problem of no male heirs, but rather being for women who did not want to marry or live the restrictions of women, so instead presented as male and were accepted as honorary men, able to drink and smoke and hang out with men. Unsurprisingly, no women nowadays are choosing this path, as there are no longer the restrictions on women that there were, and so sworn virgins will shortly die out.

Believing in trans ideology means believing that the category of sex is irrelevant
Yes. this is it. Trans ideology means believing that its innate gender identity which makes you a man or a woman and not your sex. I very much doubt ANY of the cultures or individuals claimed as ' trans', or having 'trans' people accepted within them, believed this.

There have been recent attempts to classify androgynous women as trans. Women like Grace Jones and Annie Lennox who are 'obviously trans or non-binary' because of the short hair and masculine clothing 🙄
Just more examples of stupid attempts to classify what a woman should be. If anyone ever tried to tell my butch lesbian friend that she's non binary because of the way she looks she'd have a word or two. She's 70 and has put up with plenty of shit in her life because of her sexuality but never once questioned that she's a woman. An interesting interview with Grace Jones who is as ever just herself.
https://www.vogue.com/article/grace-jones-memoir

I suppose that it could be argued that ‘transpeople’ have always existed, but if they were successful( ? Correct ?) no one would have known or noticed. Of, course that is not susceptible to proof either way.

Contemporary evidence, however, seems to lead us to the conclusion that very few people, even with the benefit of surgical and pharmaceutical strategies which would have been unimaginable to earlier ages, actually seem to register as other than their chromosomal sex after the briefest of encounters. So transvestites are evidential and credible, because they are ‘only’ garbing themselves in the clothes expected of the other sex in their society ( of course, this does point thé conundrum of TW seldom wearing the jeans/ trousers/ tee shirt/ jumper found in most Western women’s wardrobes. If you really want to ‘pass’ you would be better off dressing in unisex , then you might look like a ‘mannish’ woman.)

I expect there have indeed always been people who felt they would be happier as the other sex. To me, this is rather more understandable for women for whom so many opportunities were closed. I don’t think there have been many people in previous eras who have believed and/or been encouraged to believe that they are actually the other sex, and to force other people to concur.

@lamppostliving I personally believe that gender identity disorder has probably always existed amongst a small cohort.

I think part of the problem is that gradually (largely during the C19th in Western world) non-normative behaviours began to be considered a 'disorder' instead of just different or unusual.

Michel Foucault famously pointed out that sodomy, for example, had once been something people did, but at some point 'the homosexual' became an identity (and a really maligned one, at one time associated with being physically and morally inferior - which gives way to the pride and LGBT movement as people hit back against that). Likewise cross dressing or being feminine are now often considered crucial to identity rather than just 'a way some people like to behave, and so what'.