Thread by @_oatc_

May I lay before you trans women in 2nd cent AD Syria, in a validated Greek text? Theory has it their traditions dated back to at least 660BCE, & have been reflected until very recently right across to SE Asia, but were erased by xtianity to the west.

For that SE Asia connection, the Kathoey of 🇻🇳🇰🇭🇹🇭 were Buddhist temple dancers, & the Kothi, Aravani, & Hijra of 🇮🇳🇵🇰🇧🇩 may have been too, before Hinduism, & Islam. Here's an 🇮🇳 Aravani dancer who had surgery at 10yo

Are the Aravani trans women? Most say they are women, even though some Hijra identify as #3rdGender. See what you think… Here is another, younger, married, 🇮🇳Aravani dancer
#TransHistory #TransWorldwide #TransCulture

How then did the 🇮🇳🇧🇩🇵🇰 hijra (a very specific trans culture who own houses & are based on guru-led families) get reduced to supplementing their dancing by begging? The 🇬🇧 included them in their 1870 Criminal Tribes Act & interned them all!

That act was part of a west (& empires, & 🇺🇸)-wide anti-syphilis drive pushed by the new police doctors. In 🇬🇧 their attempt to criminalise us by the prosecution of #StellaBoulton🖼️ failed, but, until the 1960s, they just locked us in the new county asylums anyway.

20yo Stella was tailed by the London Met Police for a whole year, on the orders of no less than the Home Secretary, & her 1871 trial was in Westminster Hall🖼️, led by the Attorney General. Her mother testified she had always been like a girl. We're a recent thing, eh? 🤣

From 1848 🇺🇸 passed laws against clothes, that weren't repealled until the 1970s. Some of 🔥 under Stonewall, Comptons, etc, was being thrown in the police cage if caught wearing more than the permitted number of "female" (or "male") vestments. 1st victim an AFAB doctor 🙄

cc @ThreadReaderApp unroll please