Transphobia, not trans people, is the modern invention. We have always been here. #TransRightsAreHumanRights https://twitter.com/MaryRobinette/status/835019754591162369

There's this idea that queer people were invented in the '60s and haven't been a part of history for...well...as long as there's been a history to record. That all...this *gestures* is a new thing. I keep meeting queer people with /no/ knowledge of their own history, good or bad.

Thing is, there's power in knowledge. In understanding that we have always been here and will continue to be here no matter how we're referred to, or what we're put through by people around us. And that people CAN be kind, and decent, and have always been able to be this way.

That's the second time in a couple of weeks I've found an account from the turn of the century where exactly that happened. The other one was from Russia, an Orthodox Jewish community were overjoyed that one of their girls went away and was welcomed back as a boy! Just like that!

Queer history isn't solely a history of suffering. There's joy too. I think people get put off learning it, if they're even aware it exists, in part because they think it must be so grim. It isn't! Not always, anyway! God there's

It's Byzantine definitely-not-gay marriages; it's love-pacts between wakashu in Edo Japan; it's Viking warriors getting buried together; it's Julie D'Aubigny dueling her way across France with her girlfriend! Its Baron Franz Nopcsa von Felso-Szilvas discovering dinosaurs!

(Side-note: Julie D'Aubigny is /fantastic/ and everyone should look up her story. Wikipedia's not a great resource for this, but, well, put it this way: you have to be pretty cool for THIS to be one of the main images illustrating your life 300 years later...)

As I said: Transphobia is a modern invention.

I think if more people knew that we'd be in a better position to fight back.