@ghost_bird the idea that gender has always been defined in reference to some abled norm is one i find a little troublesome. certainly that was the impetus for its inclusion in medicine, but that inclusion follows upon, rather than generates, the split between gender and sex which was already happening in feminist circles (starting with The Second Sex in 1949; “gender identity” was not coined until 1964). THAT split was politically motivated, aimed not at trans people at all, but rather at understanding how “womanhood” came to be constructed as an oppressed class (and how it might be constructed differently): if the woman/man binary is not equivalent to the female/male binary, then we can more easily imagine a world free of woman/man, even as biology constrains us to female/male (the latter has since been problematized).

so while the article accuses those who paint gender as nonpathological of being ahistoric, i return those claims: by positing gender as an normalizing invention on the part of medical professionals, it ahistorically erases its more radical and political roots.