History of trans people in the UK and the development of trans healthcare In order to clearly examine the current climate of transgender social divisions and healthcare
problems, the rich history of trans people, activism, healthcare and public discourse should
first be understood. However, this history is controversial in itself, as much of the modern
debate remains bogged dow n by the idea that transgenderism is a ‘modern fad’,
dangerously entrapping twenty-first- century youth in ‘gender ideology’, which is
perpetuated by organisations such as Transgender Trend. The following examples, which
first cover trans people in history, then the development of their healthcare and legal rights,
seeks to demonstrate that trans people have been amongst society for centuries before the
‘trans debate’.
Trans history prior to the twentieth century is hard to identify, as most trans people
of the era would be totally unfamiliar with the concept of ‘coming out’: their very existence
as a trans person hinged upon remaining undetected or facing persecution. Furthermore,
‘transsexual’ and ‘transvestite’ were terms coined in the twentieth -century, so people we
would now call trans would be unlikely to describe themselves in such a way. The trans
people we are aware of were often discovered due to unconsented ‘medical checks’ into
their sex, either during life or after death, despite many requesting that they be buried in the
clothes they died wearing. The existence of third genders in indigenous cultures from
Thailand to North America to west Africa, is also difficult to qualify. Westerners who
documented their findings would often consider them ‘sodomites’, but the application of the
term transgender or non- binary is hardly any less problematic, as it’s still a form of
colonising unfamiliar cultures into Western understandings.
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