As the transgender community continues to fight for civil rights in the U.S., one of the most common arguments against progress is that transgender people are a recent phenomenon. Some regard trans people as a symptom of the postmodern condition, or identity politics on steroids. Many claim that the struggle for transgender rights is difficult because the concept is still new to many Americans.
But the reality is that transgender people have been striving for their rights in America before the 1960s, when a black trans woman named Marsha P. Johnson is credited by many for throwing the first brick during the Stonewall Inn riots, ushering in the start of a movement. Just years earlier, transgender people protested police crackdowns on their very existence in San Francisco at the Compton’s Cafeteria riots. Other moments of defiance exist, of course, but remain untold.
Half a century of struggle for trans rights in the U.S. is only one thread of a larger global tapestry. Employing a variety of genders beyond man and woman across the world, people who don’t identify with the gender they were assigned at birth have been working for centuries to guarantee their liberties since ancient times. The recent explosion of visibility might make the fight for trans rights seem like a recent development in the United States, but it’s a fight that’s been happening here for decades and around the world for centuries. Understanding that history will only help to inform the ongoing struggle for the liberation of gender-variant people everywhere.