Are trans and gender nonconforming identities new trends?
There is this perception today that transness is a trend, associated with young people who are growing up and claiming this identity, said Jesse Bayker, gender and sexuality historian at Rutgers University, New Jersey  arguing that this is used to marginalise trans and gender nonconforming people. Baykers research explores 19th-20th-century transgender histories in the US. Hes one of several academics I spoke to who elaborated on a long history of gender nonconforming people and subcultures around the world  and explained why understanding this is crucial for inclusive societies today. The bottom line: trans and gender nonconforming identities arent new, and understanding this disrupts ideas of Western societies at the forefront of progressivity. It can offer LGBTIQ people a critical sense of community  but it can also be liberating for everyone as it is a story of resistance to gender norms. Petition: Make sure youre not funding anti-gay conversion therapy After a six-month openDemocracy investigation, major aid donors and NGOs have said they will investigate anti-LGBT conversion therapy at health facilities run by groups they fund. But unlike the other aid donors, US aid agency PEPFAR has not responded at all. Please sign this petition to show that it must take action now. Sign the petition  Gender conformitys long history is indubitable, said Adnan Hossain, author of a forthcoming academic book about the Hijra in Bangladesh, a gender nonconforming subculture dating back to the 16th-19th-century Mughal empire. Though some parts of the world had more of a pattern of gender pluralism. This idea that Western societies are uniquely progressive is something that needs to be challenged head on, Hossain said. In Bangladesh, they described how British colonial rule instead escalated the marginalisation of the Hijra amidst the vilification of all nonheterosexual and nobinary expressions and practices.  Presenting trans and gender nonconforming identities as new enables attacks on them, said Kit Heyam, a UK-based trans academic, but its also a problem to see white non-binary people instrumentalising the genders of people of colour, saying: My gender is valid because look at the Hijra.  If were claiming community with people who are not from our culture, I think we have a responsibility to put work in to fully understanding what it means to be someone of that particular gender [] and how we can fight for their rights, Heyam said, rather than simply use them to validate ourselves.  Online there are a rising number of short listicles on, for example, such non-binary communities around the globe or historical figures you did not know were trans. But they dont do this history justice. Gender nonconformity has always been disruptive and prompted backlash, Heyam emphasises. South Asias gender nonconforming subcultures created this alternative space or countercultural formation in response to the mainstream masculinities that rejected them, Hossain whos studied the Hijra added. The fact that [the hijra] exists is a testament to the resilience of these communities.  From New Jersey, Baykers research has unearthed centuries-old stories of trans people living in the US but also resisting oppression and arrest and when other people tried to stand in their way [...] thats also something that we often think is a more recent phenomenon: trans people fighting back  but its not.  Academics have also studied the histories of gender nonconforming communities in countries from Indonesia to Oman, and the Inca Empire. Raven Dinelle, a two-spirit youth activist in Canada, previously wrote for openDemocracy about their communitys past and present resistance. Colonialism attempted to crush our culture, they wrote, but today, Indigenous youth like myself are reclaiming our two-spirit identity.  This identity, Dinelle explained, refers to the distinct experience of those who dont conform to heteronormativity or cisnormativity, and those who embrace gender diversity, while living within Indigenous traditions. Once, they said, We were revered for our capacity to bridge two worlds [...] living outside of binaries.  They also described how important it had been for them to meet and learn about Indigenous peoples from Central and South America, Australia and New Zealand who are also standing strong against a centuries-old attack on our cultures. Learning about such histories can be liberating for everybody, Heyam argues: Its not just about trans people deserving a sense of history; its about making it clear that there is no such thing as traditional static gender.  This should also be liberating for women who face restrictive gender norms as well as men who are still oppressed by reductive understandings of masculinity, they said. We are all oppressed by the structures of gender that we have at the moment [...] We all have a lot to gain by disrupting them.