Gender diversity has always existed across human history
Dr Helen Webberley on Triggernometry: the trans debate, with Konstantin Kisin, Triggernometry
Being trans is a modern phenomenon, something the internet created or politics invented. People assume it emerged recently, that it is a product of our particular cultural moment rather than something woven into human experience across every era and every culture.
What I was trying to say there is that the history is genuinely fascinating, and it is all there if you look. Gender diversity has existed across recorded human history, in every part of the world, long before anyone had a word for it. What has changed in the last decade is not the existence of trans people but the noise around them. And underneath all that noise, the biology is actually quite straightforward: most people with XY chromosomes identify as male, most people with XX chromosomes identify as female, and some do not. That is it. That is the whole thing. It really is that simple, and I find it beautiful rather than complicated.
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