History

Although transgender is a contemporary term, individuals who identified and often lived their lives as a gender different from their sex assigned at birth have long existed in the United States and throughout the world. The existence of genders beyond the binary in the United States can be traced to before it was a country, as many Indigenous cultures recognized more than two genders. White colonial societies saw birth-assigned sex as immutable and punished what they saw as gender transgressions, and this remained the dominant framework in the country for more than 300 years. Trans people have succeeded in building communities and gaining recognition and rights in more recent decades, but they continue to face oppression from large parts of society.