Is Being Trans A New Thing⁉️

Are Trans People Real!?!?

First Name Tom, Last Name Foolery… And I’m Everybody’s Uncle!    

Even this group of human… Trans People.

There’s been a recent and visible boom of trans people feeling safe and accepted enough to be out and proud: in politics and media, throughout our communities, our friends and family members, and around the world. This hasn’t always been the case. It’s well within living memory that public trans figures and role models were far and few between, if they existed at all.

So it makes sense to look at this shift and wonder what happened - is being trans a new phenomenon? Are there more trans people than ever before? Where did they come from?

All of these are big and complex questions, so let’s dive in and answer them.

Are trans people new?

While the simple answer is no, it depends on how we’re using the word ‘trans’.

The word trans only emerged into popular usage in the 1960s and 1970s1, and so if we’re using it to only mean people who have defined themselves as “trans”, that history extends back less than a century. But if that's true, then we can also say that there are no heterosexuals in history before 1868, when the word was first coined by Karl-Maria Kertbeny.

However, if we’re talking about people who moved away from the gender they were presumed to be at birth (which is the broad definition of trans) or lived cross-gender lives, there is evidence that people like this have existed in almost every culture and continent from before records were written down.

What exactly this means differed across time periods and cultures, but even without shared language, these experiences and behaviours resonate across history. The study of trans history explores this group, who may not have had access to the information, community connection, and language we have now, but whose experiences are in many ways similar to trans people today.

While a great deal of trans history covers the lives and experiences of 20th century U.S. and U.K. individuals, people who lived cross-gender lives have existed and lived in virtually every society since before written history, including in First Nations clan groups across Australia (read more on our Trans Mob page), the U.S. and around the world in India, Europe, Thailand, the Pacific Islands, throughout Africa, and beyond.

While there are names throughout history that are particularly well known, the names of people who have worked to make trans lives safer, easier, and celebrated are innumerable.

We asked our communities around NSW and Australia to share their trans pioneers, and we got quite the list indeed. Thank you to our trans trailblazers, to those who have fought for us all and to the many whose lives were cut short far too early. Your activism and advocacy work remains crucial and we honour the many shoulders we stand on, and continue to walk beside.

Why are there more trans people than before?

This is probably not the case, though there are some very good reasons why it might seem that way.

Many trans people talk about their experience of having the feeling of being trans, but not knowing how to respond to it until they see or hear about the existence of other trans people. Historically, the chances of this happening were much smaller, but over the past decades, as visibility of trans people has increased, more people have been able to realise that it’s a real thing, and have found that it’s possible to affirm their own gender as a result.

This is personal too, as more trans people are affirming themselves publically, the more likely you are to have a trans friend, partner, family member or coworker. For some people, it’s meeting another trans person in real life that sparks that final decision to affirm their gender. Often the very first trans person we meet is ourselves, so community is important.

As this visibility has increased, legal protections and gender affirming medical care have also become more available, and with them, people feeling safer and more able to live out and affirm themselves in ways that they want.

Conservative estimates say around 2% of Australia’s population is trans, and chances are that this number isn’t actually any higher than before, but that today more people feel able to count themselves into this category than ever before.

Climb on The Family Tree below & share your thoughts about My Nephews & Nieces trans situation.

By: TH

Image(s): Getty

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