There’s ample evidence of gender variance throughout human history. Among the earliest accounts, priests assigned male at birth who crossed gender boundaries in their worship of a variety of goddesses in ancient Sumer, Akkadia, Greece, and Rome. Other cultures acknowledged a third gender, including two-spirit people within Indigenous communities and Hijra.
在整个人类历史中，有充分的证据表明性别差异。在最早的记载中，在古代苏美尔、阿卡迪亚、希腊和罗马，出生时为男性的祭司们在对各种女神的崇拜中跨越了性别界限。有的文化承认第三性别，包括土著社区中的双灵人和海吉拉。
Some who challenged the gender binary occupied official roles. During the short reign of the Roman emperor best known as Elagabalus, who ruled from C.E. 218 to 222., the male-born leader adopted feminine dress, requested to be referred to as “she,” and expressed a desire for genital removal surgery. Shunned and stigmatized, Elagabalus was assassinated at age 18 and thrown into the Tiber River.
一些挑战性别二元结构的人占据了官方职位。公元218年到222年，在罗马皇帝埃拉加巴卢斯的短暂统治期间，这位生理性别为男性的领导人穿戴女性装束，要求被称为“她”，并表示希望进行生殖器切除手术。埃拉加巴卢斯遭到回避和污名化，18岁时被暗杀，并被扔进了台伯河。
In the early 20th century, medical advances made hormone therapy and gender confirmation surgery possible. Thanks in part to doctor and reformer Magnus Herschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Research in Germany, founded in 1919, medical gender confirmation changed both trans people’s lives and public conceptions of gender. In the 1950s, Jorgensen, a U.S. Army veteran, sought both hormone therapy and a series of gender affirmation surgeries in Denmark and the U.S.
在20世纪初，医学进步使激素疗法和性别确认手术成为可能。这部分归功于德国医生和改革者赫施菲尔德在1919年成立的性研究所，医学性别确认改变了跨性别者的生活和公众对性别的看法。20世纪50年代，美国退伍军人约根森在丹麦和美国寻求激素疗法和一系列性别确认手术。
In the wake of public cases like Jorgensen’s, the term “transgender” entered the lexicon. Scholars have tracked the term’s origins to the 1960s, when it was used both in medicine and by trans activists like Jorgensen. Today, the term “transgender” is used as what Transgender Archives founder Christan Williams calls “an umbrella term for describing a range of gender-variant identities and communities.”
在约根森等例子之后，“变性人”一词进入了词典。学者们将这个词的起源追溯到20世纪60年代，当时它被用于医学和描述约根森等跨性别活动家。今天，“跨性别”一词被用作跨性别档案馆创始人克里斯坦·威廉姆斯所称的总括术语，用于描述一系列不同性别的身份和群体。
Starting in the mid-20th century, trans activists began pushing for wider societal acceptance—and were instrumental in some of the earliest attempts to gain civil rights for LGBTQ Americans. Despite the burgeoning transgender pride movement and unprecedented awareness of trans people in the U.S., the marginalization of trans and nonbinary people continues.
从20世纪中叶开始，跨性别活动家开始推动更广泛的社会接受——并在最早为 LGBTQ 美国人争取公民权利的一些尝试中发挥了重要作用。尽管美国的跨性别自豪运动蓬勃发展，跨性别者的意识空前高涨，但跨性别者和非二元性别者的边缘化仍在继续。
图文来源 | National Geographic
翻译 | 新译科技AI+人工校对
编辑、排版 | 金诗怡
