Think being trans is a ‘trend’? Consider these 18th century ‘female husbands’ | Gabrielle Bellot

Conservatives think they can avoid accepting trans people by reducing our existence to a passing fad. But we've always been here

Whenever the subject of transgender identities comes up today, there is a tendency for conservative politicians - perhaps most of all in the United States - to trot out a particularly specious argument: that the idea of being trans is a new" concept, a notion that no one" in their right mind had heard of, or would entertain, in previous eras.

At its most extreme, this argument suggests that a peculiar concoction of things is to blame for our existence - from social media, indoctrination by well-paid gender studies professors, or even an excess of supposedly hormone-altering substances, like soy or arcane chemicals, in our diets. Non-binary identities particularly confound conservatives.