A common defence of those who abstain from using they/them pronouns is that they are part of some new-fangled ‘trend’ and are far too sudden and transient for anyone other than ‘The Youths’ to use, along with the argument that using ‘they’ in the singular form is grammatically incorrect. However often these claims are used, both are wrong. ‘They’ in the singular form has been in use since the 14th century by prolific writers such as Geoffrey Chaucer (The Canterbury Tales, 1386), William Shakespeare (Hamlet, 1599) and Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice, 1813); and the concept of gender-nonconformity has been around a far longer (ancient Mesopotamia, to be precise). Gender non-conformity is defined as ‘behaviour or gender expression by an individual that does not match masculine or feminine gender norms’. In this article, I will be using the term as a catch-all for all individuals and communities regarded as not ‘fitting’ modern, westernised society’s gender binary. It is important to note that most of these figures did not have access to the language around gender identity and expression that we have today, and that we will never actually know how they would have identified had they had our modern vocabulary and understanding of gender. We cannot apply anachronistic language to those who did not have any knowledge of its existence, and in that spirit, the language and terms used to refer to the figures in this article will be kept as gender neutral as possible.
The earliest records we have of gender non-conformity date back to Mesopotamian mythology from the second millennium BCE, some of the earliest written records of humanity. In the Sumerian creation myth, the goddess Ninmah creates a being with ‘no male organ and no female organ’. Also, in the Akkadian myth of Atra-Hasis, dating from around 1700BCE, the goddess of birth, Nintu, is instructed to establish ‘a third category among the people’ in addition to men and women. There are also records from around this time which describe the cult of the goddess Inanna (who appears in more myths than any other Sumerian deity). Cult members and priests were known for their androgyny and disregard for any sort of gender-binary.
Additionally, for as long as there has been the concept of patriarchy, there have been biological women taking on masculine names, appearances, and roles to get around it. One particularly famous example of this from the ancient world is the Egyptian Pharaoh, Hatshepsut. Hatshepsut came into power while acting as regent for her nephew/stepson during the 15th century BCE. Having taken the role of pharaoh, Hatshepsut ordered artists to portray them in pictures as a man, with a male body and false beard. After a 21-year reign, Hatshepsut’s nephew did his best to erase the pharaoh from all historical recorded by defacing any monuments bearing record of the rule, even removing Hatshepsut’s name from the list of kings. Countless others have embraced masculine gender expression over the years for the image of power it creates and the doors it opens. Landowner and diarist Anne Lister, often hailed as ‘the first modern lesbian’, was notorious for wearing masculine clothing. Mary Read and Anne Bonny were both pirates who dressed as men on order to live and work on ships in the early 1700s in the Caribbean, and Joan of Arc led the French army into victory in 1429 while disguised as a man.
Along with the many women (or so history perceives them) attempting to escape the patriarchy through rejecting traditional assigned gender presentation, there have also been those rebelling against binary gender presentation simply because it does not express their identity. For example, the Public Universal Friend, an 18th century preacher, woke after a severe illness rejecting their birth name and all gendered pronouns. The Friend then spent the rest of their life preaching throughout the northeast of the US in androgynous clothing. After their sudden and unlikely recovery from some near-fatal illness in 1776, the Friend began refusing to answer to their birth-name, ignoring or chastising any who insisted on using it. They also asked not to be referred to with gendered pronouns, choosing to go only by ‘The Friend’, or ‘The Public Universal Friend’ in more formal contexts. The Friend quickly amassed a group of followers (called the ‘Society of Universal Friends’), who held similar beliefs to mainstream contemporary Quakerism, emphasising the importance of free will, the abolition of slavery and sexual abstinence.
Another example would be Jens Andersson. In 1781, Andersson (who was assigned female at birth but presented as male) tried to get married and ended up on trial for sodomy when the bride discovered their ‘deception’. At the trial, upon being asked “Are you a man or a woman?”, the answer recorded was “He thinks he may be both.” The Chevalier d’Eon was a French diplomat, spy, and soldier. Born in 1728 and assigned male at birth, d’Eon was described as having ‘androgynous physical characteristics’ and after appearing public as a man for the first 49 years of their life, d’Eon managed to infiltrate the court of Empress Elizabeth of Russia, presenting as a woman. Upon returning to France, the Chevalier claimed to have been assigned female at birth and demanded to be recognised as such by the government. D’Eon lived the rest of life as a woman but managed to keep their position, even offering to lead a division of female soldiers against the Hapsburgs in 1792, which was rebuffed but a noteworthy move nonetheless.
Throughout the concept of gender non-conformity’s existence, there have been those who use it as a sort of art form, such as modern drag performers. As a society, we seem to find something eternally entertaining in the pretend, and in people acting as things they are not; cross-dressing is an extension of this. Our popular modern artform of ‘drag’ performance has been shaped by key figures over the past few hundred years. Princess Seraphina (a stage name for John Cooper, who worked by day as a gentleman’s servant) is recognised as the UK’s first modern drag queen. Most of the knowledge we have about Cooper is from a trial in which Cooper accused a man of stealing clothes in 1732. From records of the trial, it would seem Cooper’s drag identity was very much accepted and respected – being referred to exclusively as either ‘Princess’ or ‘her Highness’ by witnesses. By night, Seraphina worked in molly houses. Molly houses, pubs or clubs where queer men would meet, were very popular in 1700s London and are often cited as one of the first examples of a queer sub-culture movement. Cross dressing and drag were very common forms of entertainment in molly houses, and though they were frequently raided (resulting in arrest and sometimes execution), they remained a cultural hub for the male queer community well into the 19th century.
Another pioneer in drag was William Dorsey Swann, the first known person to self-identify as a ‘queen of drag’. Born into slavery in Maryland, Swann organised a series of drag balls in Washington DC during the 1880s and 1890s. Swann was arrested several times in police raids on these balls, resulting in the first documented arrest for ‘female impersonation’ in the US. When sentenced to 10 months in prison for ‘keeping a disorderly house’, Swann requested a pardon from the president (Grover Cleveland). Though the request was denied, it made Swann the first recorded American to pursue legal action defending the LGBTQ community’s right to gather.
Though I list many names in this article, we must also strive to acknowledge the ones lost. Many indigenous communities have had gender non-confirming communities for as long as anyone can remember. For example, the South Asian Hijra community, the Mexican Zapotec Muxes, Samoan Fa’afafine people, the Hawaiian Mahu community and Native American Two-Spirit people. It is much harder to find individual accounts from these communities from history, as often their stories were never written down or deliberately destroyed by colonisers. For example, during the British Raj, the British attempted to ‘eradicate’ Hijras (an officially recognised third gender in India), introducing section 377 of the Indian Penal Code which allowed authorities to prosecute Hijras for simply existing. This is just the tip of a much wider iceberg, there are countless other indigenous non-binary and gender non-conforming communities that have had their history erased and their records destroyed by colonisers.
Queer, and particularly gender non-conforming histories have been covered up for centuries. Stories have been deliberately lost or left unrecorded in an effort to convince the world that these people have never existed. This is one of many reasons why it is so important to tell Queer history: to give those previously shunned and stricken the chance to receive their deserved recognition. Erased history does not equate lack of existence and it’s vital that more people realise that. So yes, there have and always will be people existing outside the gender binary- you’ve just been kept from their stories, and it’s high time we change that.
