This claim below(IE: the idea that Trans people are a “new thing” as many GC’s put it)is incredibly common. But is is accurate? Well, in a word, no. It is in fact ahistorical nonsense. in this thread we’re gonna show that in fact, Trans people have existed throughout history.

*note* this thread will focus mainly on Europe. That’s not an attempt to exclude other cultures, there is just far too much material to cover in one place and as such I’ve divided geographically. In later threads we’ll look at history in other regions.

There are tantalising hints even within Europe’s prehistory of complex gender roles. Drawings of androgynous and genderless figures found around the Mediterranean have been dated to between 9000 and 4000 years old.

Similarly, a burial outside modern day Prague was discovered to contain a biologically male skeleton buried with in a woman’s outfit and with feminine grave goods.

In Ancient Greece and the Roman republic the worship of Cybele and Attis was performed by priests known as galli, male individuals who wore feminine clothes and referred to themselves as women(some even being recorded as having castrated themselves)

The Roman emperor Elagabalus was said by Roman historians to have worn wigs and makeup, rejected being called a lord and preferred to be addressed as a lady and offered vast sums of money to any physician who could provide the imperial body with female genitalia.

Another figure, Anastasia the Patrician who was born a woman took up residence in a monastery in Egypt and assumed the life of a hermit(a role reserved only for men) and spent the remainder of their life as an assumed male(and is often regarded as a Trans gender saint)

Around 98 CE in Germania the Roman historian Tacticus reported that the (male) priest of the Nahanarvali tribe wore women’s clothes( this was during the same time period as the Greco-Roman Galli priesthood existed meaning that Tacticus would have been aware of the similarities)

In Viking era Scandinavia we find stories like that of Thorberg, a character In Hrólfs saga. Thorberg was born a woman but lived as a man and used male pronouns. The saga refers to him as a man and even goes as far as to ascribe him the title ‘Thorberg kunungr(king Thorberg)’

The Viking era societies seem to have a good deal to say about gender fluid behaviour. Transmasculine characters like Thorberg were accepted and even celebrated within the sagas. The view on transfeminine behaviour appears to be more negative but such behaviour certainly existed

We see examples of transfeminine behaviour even amongst the Norse gods(indicating that it was common enough to have entered into the popular culture of the time. The Norse language even evolved a word(ergi or argr) which described a man who had assumed a role seen as womanly.

In one stanza within the lokasenna Loki taunts Odin telling him
‘ I hear you performed witchcraft (seidh, a form of sorcery practiced by women) on samsey and beat the drums like a volva (a female seer) before going on to tell Odin that such behaviour is ergi(unmanly)

These exchanges show us that while such behaviour may have been frowned upon in a highly masculine society it certainly existed and was common enough that it was remarked upon in the popular culture of the time.

Moving further into the Middle Ages we find the story of Eleanor Rykener. A male bodied sex worked arrested in London in 1394. When arrested they were wearing women’s clothes and had been living and working as a woman in oxford for quite some time.

Historian Cordelia Beattie claims that from what we can glean from the(relatively well attested) records of this case ‘it is clear that Rykener could pass as a woman’ and that passing in everyday life (as Rykener was able to do) would have involved other gendered behaviour.

chevalier d’éon, a French diplomat who lived publicly as a man for over 40 years was able during that period to infiltrate the Russian imperial court by presenting as a woman. After his death doctors discovered both male organs and feminine characteristics.

Perhaps the most famous instance of gender non conformity in Europe though is that of Jeanne d’arc. While it is impossible to say(as with all of these individuals) how they themself would have described their gender identity in modern terms what we can say is the following.

1: Joan of arc was born as a woman but lived the majority of their life as a man.
2: they were executed not for witchcraft, but specifically were executed for refusing to refute their practice of wearing male clothes(the capital heresy charge was for cross dressing).

We should as noted previously be careful about applying modern understandings of gender terminology to these cases. It is impossible to know how these individuals would have understood or referred to themselves or their identity.

What we can say with absolute certainty is that the historic record does not support the claim that the gender binary is the standard approach. Many different understandings of gender roles have existed throughout all of recorded history. They are not new. They are the norm.

Oh. One final note for anyone interested in linguistics. A good deal of evidence suggests that the modern English ‘bad’ is drawn from the old English term ‘baeddel’ which was an insult directed at transfeminine individuals.
Trans folks have been here forever

Oh. And one final, final note. If anyone reading this is interested in the sources I used for this thread feel free to drop me a line. I was going to include them initially but it got a bit out of control.