Colonialism & the Gender Binary: What Was Erased, and What’s Being Reclaimed
If you grew up in a Western-influenced country, you were probably taught that gender is simple: two boxes, pick one, stay in it. But that tidy little story has a much messier history and a far more political one. The gender binary wasn’t some inevitable truth carved into humanity from day one. It was built, exported, and enforced through colonisation.
Long before European powers spread their laws, religions, and paperwork across the world, many cultures held complex, layered, and deeply respected understandings of gender. Some had three genders. Some had five. Some didn’t organise society by gender at all. And crucially, these identities weren’t marginal or niche—they were woven into spiritual life, community roles, kinship, medicine, and leadership.
Then colonisation arrived and said:
Actually, no. Two genders. Male, female. Anything else is sinful, criminal, or “uncivilised.”
This wasn’t accidental. Imposing a rigid binary helped enforce Christian morality, consolidate patriarchal power, control reproduction and labour, and dismantle Indigenous social structures that didn’t fit the colonial order.
Today, when people claim that non-binary identities are “new,” “Western,” or “made up by TikTok,” they’re unknowingly (sometimes knowingly) echoing the exact colonial logic that erased hundreds of gender-diverse traditions in the first place.
This post explores what was lost and what we’re reclaiming. From the Pacific to South Asia, Africa to the Americas, the resurgence of gender-diverse identities is not a “trend.” It’s a return. A remembering. A refusal to let colonisation have the final word.
Colonialism Didn’t Just Take Land — It Rewrote Gender
When people talk about colonisation, they usually focus on the obvious: land theft, resource extraction, forced assimilation, and borders drawn with the grace of a toddler with crayons. But one of the quieter (unwritten from history) exports of colonial rule was a strict, rigid gender binary.
And it didn’t spread by accident; it spread because it served a purpose.
The Binary Was a Colonial Tool, Not a Global Truth
Across Europe, the rise of Christian doctrine, patriarchal family structures, and early capitalist labour demands produced a very specific worldview:
Two genders.
Tied directly to anatomy.
Permanently linked to reproductive roles.
Enforced through religion, law, and moral panic.
This system worked neatly for a society that needed to control inheritance, land ownership, labour divisions, and sexual behaviour. When European empires expanded, they didn’t just bring flags and missionaries. They brought this gender model and insisted it was “civilised.”
Imposing the Binary Was Strategic
Colonial authorities used gender as a tool of governance. Rewriting gender systems helped:
weaken Indigenous governance structures
criminalise spiritual and cultural roles that didn’t fit European norms
force communities into patriarchal family units more compatible with colonial administration
regulate sexuality and reproduction
justify the idea that colonised peoples were “primitive”
If you’ve ever wondered why so many anti-LBGTQ+ laws in Africa, Asia, or the Pacific are suspiciously identical, it’s because they weren’t homegrown; they were imported. Often word-for-word, directly from British or French penal codes.
Where Gender Flexibility Once Thrived, Colonialism Installed Categories
Suddenly, gender became something you could be punished for deviating from. Identities that had been respected for centuries were reclassified as:
immoral
illegal
“against nature”
or simply erased from public life
Colonial officials weren’t subtle. They used schools, churches, censuses, medical systems, and policing to force everyone into the binary. If your culture had five genders? Too bad. If your culture didn’t organise life around gender? Too confusing for the British, apparently.
And the Effects Didn’t End When Colonisation Did
Even after independence movements swept the world, those imported gender norms stayed embedded in:
legal systems
education
religious institutions
family structures
national identity narratives
This is why the claim that non-binary identity is “Western” or “new” is so deeply ironic. The West exported the binary, then turned around centuries later and asked why the rest of the world doesn’t have a “long history” of gender diversity.
Spoiler: it did. You just outlawed it.
Before Colonisation Gender Was Many Things, Not Just Two
If you zoom out beyond Western history books, the idea that humanity naturally divides into “man” and “woman” starts to fall apart quickly. Many cultures had multiple genders, flexible gender roles, or no gendered categories as we recognise them today. In other words, the binary is the exception, not the rule.
The Pacific: Gender Diversity as Community Backbone
Throughout the Pacific, gender-diverse identities weren’t rare; they were foundational.
Māhū in Hawai‘i and Tahiti held roles in teaching, healing, and cultural stewardship.
Fa’afafine in Samoa and Fakaleitī in Tonga were integral to social and familial life, often taking on community-centred responsibilities.
These identities weren’t framed as “third options.” They existed because many Pacific cultures didn’t force gender into a rigid binary to begin with. Gender was relational, communal, and tied to service, not chromosomes.
South and Southeast Asia: Long Histories of Sacred Gender Roles
In South Asia, colonial powers encountered gender systems older than their own empires:
Hijra communities have centuries-long histories linked to spirituality, artistry, blessing rituals, and court culture.
In Indonesia, the Bugis people recognised five genders, including bissu, androgynous priest-healers who mediated between the material and spiritual worlds.
These weren’t “alternative lifestyles.” They were respected social positions woven into cosmology and community governance.
Africa: Complex Gender Systems That Western Textbooks Erased
Across the African continent, many precolonial societies organised life around lineage, age, spirituality, or clan, not binary gender.
Among the Yoruba, gender roles were fluid, and leadership wasn’t restricted to men or women in the Western sense.
The Igbo recognised “female husbands,” a social status that allowed women to hold political and economic power independent of marital gender norms.
Gender wasn’t a moral rule; it was one social dimension among many, and often not the most important one.
The Americas: Spiritually Grounded Gender Variance
Hundreds of Indigenous nations across Turtle Island have distinct gender identities and roles today umbrella’d under Two-Spirit, though each nation has its own word and cultural meaning.
Two-Spirit people were often:
healers
visionaries
mediators
artists
knowledge-keepers
Their existence was part of the spiritual architecture of many nations, not a footnote.
And Many Societies Didn’t Organise Themselves by Gender at All
Some cultures didn’t “do” gender in the way modern societies do. Roles were determined by relationship, skill, initiation, caste, or kinship, not by genital categories. The binary wasn’t absent; it was irrelevant.
The Point Isn’t That These Cultures Were “Progressive” They Just Weren’t Obsessed With Limiting People
What’s clear across regions is this: precolonial societies held a far wider range of gender possibilities than what colonial rule later enforced. Their frameworks weren’t utopian or perfect; they were just different. More flexible. More context-driven. Less invested in controlling bodies and behaviours through gender policing.
Humans have always had more than two ways of being.
Colonialism didn’t introduce gender diversity. It tried to extinguish it.
What Colonial Powers Tried to Erase and the Damage Still Felt Today
When colonial authorities pushed the gender binary onto societies that had never used it, the goal wasn’t “modernisation.” It was control. Reshaping indigenous gender systems helped dismantle existing power structures and replace them with ones that served the colonial project. And the fallout from that forced rewrite is still shaping the world today.
The Binary Was Enforced Through Law, Religion & Punishment
Colonial officials didn’t just suggest the binary; they legislated it.
British penal codes criminalised same-sex relationships and gender variance across Asia, Africa, and the Pacific.
Missionaries destroyed or banned ceremonies involving gender-diverse people.
Schools taught children to see their own communities’ gender traditions as “primitive” or shameful.
Medical officers pathologised non-binary, intersex, and gender-nonconforming bodies.
This wasn’t a cultural misunderstanding; it was deliberate dismantling.
Community Roles Were Targeted First
Gender-diverse people often held cultural, spiritual, or social roles that made them influential, which colonial governments saw as a threat.
So they went after them.
Hijra communities were labelled criminals under colonial law.
Christian missions and assimilation policies targeted two-Spirit people.
Bissu priesthoods in Indonesia were persecuted; some were killed.
Pacific identities like Māhū were reframed as immoral under missionary rule.
Erasing these roles helped sever cultural knowledge systems that had operated for generations.
Colonial Gender Ideology Rewired Family Structures
The Western nuclear family, father as head, mother as caretaker, children as dependents, was aggressively promoted as the “proper” social model.
This replaced:
multi-generational kinship systems
communal caregiving structures
gender-diverse spiritual and leadership roles
social systems organised by clan, age, caste, or kinship rather than gender
This wasn’t just social engineering; it was a political strategy. A rigid binary made populations easier to classify, tax, govern, and convert.
Internalised Shame Became a Colonial Inheritance
Even after countries gained independence, many retained colonial laws and moral codes, sometimes because leaders believed they were “traditional,” unaware they were imports.
The result?
Anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ+ policies across the Global South trace directly back to colonial rule.
Many communities lost intergenerational knowledge about their own gender-diverse histories.
Queerphobia is now framed as “cultural preservation” despite being one of colonialism’s most successful exports.
The erasure wasn’t just historical; it shaped how entire nations came to understand “gender,” “family,” and “morality.”
And the Absence Gets Misinterpreted as a Lack of History
Today, when people claim certain cultures “don’t have a tradition” of non-binary or gender-diverse identities, they’re often looking at the aftermath of colonial suppression, not the truth of what existed.
Silence isn’t proof of absence.
Often, silence results from someone being forcibly silenced.
The Damage Wasn’t Inevitable, But Its Impact Is Ongoing
From religious fundamentalism to anti-trans legislation to debates about “biological truth,” we’re still living inside a gender system shaped by colonial priorities, not cultural authenticity.
Understanding that history isn’t about guilt.
It’s about clarity.
It’s about knowing where today’s violence, stigma, or invisibility actually comes from and who wrote those rules in the first place.
What’s Being Reclaimed? The Global Revival of Gender-Diverse Traditions
Here’s the good news: colonial erasure wasn’t total, and it wasn’t final. All over the world, communities are reviving, protecting, and re-centring gender-diverse identities that were suppressed, criminalised, or forced underground. And this resurgence isn’t a trend, it’s a return to cultural memory.
Reclaiming Isn’t “Copying the West” — It’s Reconnecting With Ancestral Knowledge
One of the biggest misconceptions (usually spread by people who haven’t read a single history book outside Europe) is that gender diversity is a “Western invention.”
In reality?
Much of the Global South had gender plurality centuries before the West did, and those traditions are being remembered, researched, spoken, and lived again.
Reclamation looks different in each community, but the intention is the same:
to undo the colonial lie that only two genders are “natural.”
Indigenous Nations Are Reviving Their Own Words, Not Borrowing New Ones
Across Turtle Island, Indigenous peoples are restoring ceremonies, stories, and roles specific to each nation for Two-Spirit people. “Two-Spirit” is a unifying English term, but the cultural meanings are nation-specific, tied to land, ceremony, kinship, and cosmology.
This is restoration.
Pacific Communities Are Reasserting Their Histories With Pride
For years, Pacific identities like Fa’afafine, Fakaleitī, and Māhū were misrepresented through a colonial lens. Today:
elders are sharing precolonial histories
younger generations are reclaiming language and cultural significance
Pacific scholars and activists are reframing these identities outside Western categories
This is sovereignty.
South and Southeast Asia Continue Long Legacies of Gender Diversity
Hijra, kothi, waria, and bissu communities are reclaiming spiritual and cultural identities suppressed under colonial criminalisation. In some regions, legal reforms are slowly catching up—but the cultural revival has come from communities themselves.
Reclamation here is also resistance against both colonial and contemporary transphobia, a double fight.
In Africa, Researchers and communities are re-documenting erased gender systems
As more historians and local communities study precolonial archives, oral histories, and elder knowledge, a clearer picture emerges: gender plurality existed across the continent long before European arrival.
Today, queer and trans Africans are re-grounding their identities in traditions that were buried but not gone.
Diasporic People Are Piecing Together What Assimilation Tried to Break
For many diasporic queer and non-binary people, reclaiming ancestral gender traditions is complicated by:
migration
language loss
family silence
religious conversion
colonial-era shame that still lingers
Yet people are rebuilding connections — through research, community archives, elders, scholarship, and cross-diaspora conversations. This is slow work, intimate work, political work.
Reclamation Is Not Romanticisation — It’s Truth-Telling
This revival doesn’t require pretending that every precolonial society was perfect or utopian. They weren’t.
But they weren’t uniformly binary either.
And acknowledging that complexity lets us rebuild gender futures that aren’t limited by colonial categories.
Reclamation Helps Us Expand What Gender Can Be Tomorrow
By restoring erased histories, communities create room for:
• queer and trans cultural pride
• spiritual reconnection
• community belonging
• identities outside Western frameworks
• new language, new stories, new possibilities
Reclaiming isn’t about going “back.”
It’s about moving forward with memory intact.
Why This History Matters Today — For Enbies, Trans People, and Our Global Queer Communities
So why revisit all this history? Why dig through archives, oral traditions, elder knowledge, and precolonial cosmologies? Because the story we’re told about gender today is still shaped by colonial frameworks — and those frameworks define everything from law to healthcare to families to how strangers treat us on the street.
Understanding that the binary is colonial isn’t just interesting trivia. It directly changes how we understand ourselves.
It Undercuts the Lie That Non-Binary Identity Is “New” or “Made Up”
Every time someone claims non-binary people are “a 2020s invention,” they’re repeating colonial propaganda without realising it.
The reality:
We’re not breaking gender traditions — we’re restoring them.
Knowing that can shift how enbies relate to ourselves: from feeling “other” or “out of place” to recognising that we’re part of a global, ancient lineage of gender-diverse people.
It Connects Today’s Queer Struggles to Larger Systems of Power
Transphobia doesn’t emerge from nowhere. It has roots.
• in missionary ideology
• in colonial law
• in Victorian sexual morality
• in imported religious codes
• in a need for rigid social control
So when modern governments push anti-trans legislation, they’re not defending “tradition.”
They’re reviving colonial norms.
Understanding that helps us fight smarter and frame our activism with historical accuracy, not Western myth-making.
It Helps Diasporic and Racialized Enbies Reclaim What Assimilation Took
For many of us with roots outside Europe, the binary wasn’t part of our ancestors’ worldview.
It was imposed — hard.
Learning about precolonial gender systems can feel like finding a room in your house that you didn’t know existed because someone bricked up the door generations ago.
This isn’t just political; it’s personal.
It can shift how we see our families, our languages, our cultural identity.
It Decentres Western LGBTQ+ Frameworks
A lot of mainstream LGBTQ+ discourse is built around Western categories — trans, non-binary, queer — which are useful but not universally applicable.
Other cultures have their own terms, roles, and cosmologies that don’t align neatly with Western labels.
Honouring those traditions expands queer liberation beyond Western theory and makes space for a genuinely global movement.
It Gives Us a Wider Imaginative Landscape for Gender
When we realise the binary isn’t a natural law, it stops feeling like a wall and starts feeling like a suggestion someone made in the 1800s that we never actually needed to obey.
This opens up creative possibilities for how we live, love, dress, participate in community, and build families.
Gender stops being a rulebook.
It becomes a landscape — one with history, multiplicity, and room for us to breathe.
It Grounds Our Identity in Continuity, Not Isolation
You’re not alone.
You’re not anomalous.
You’re not a glitch in the system.
You’re part of a larger human story — one that colonialism tried to erase but didn’t succeed in destroying.
And reclaiming that story is a form of resistance, healing, and cultural power.
Reclaim, Reimagine, Resist — What a Post-Colonial Gender Future Could Look Like
Reclaiming precolonial gender histories isn’t just about looking backward. It’s about loosening the grip of colonial binaries so we can build gender futures that actually make sense for our lives, our communities, and our cultures. This section is all about the “what now?” — the part readers can feel, touch, and live.
Reclaim: Learn the Histories Colonialism Tried to Bury
You don’t need to be an academic to understand your own cultural past. Reclamation can start small:
• reading Indigenous, Black, and Global South gender histories
• listening to community elders
• finding your culture’s original gender language
• learning how gender diversity shaped spiritual or social roles
• questioning which parts of “tradition” were actually imported by missionaries or colonial law
For many people — especially queer folk of colour and diasporic readers — this is profound. It’s a return to stories that were stolen, interrupted, or rewritten.
Reimagine: Build Gender Frameworks That Aren’t Stuck in the 1800s
The Western gender binary is, frankly, outdated tech. It served 19th-century colonial governments, but it’s not serving us now.
Reimagining means:
• treating gender as flexible, relational, and culturally situated
• recognising that “non-binary” isn’t a single identity, but a constellation
• letting people move between genders, inhabit multiple roles, or reject gender as an organising principle altogether
• creating language that reflects lived realities, not colonial categories
• making space for gender futures that are queer, diasporic, Indigenous, trans, fluid — or entirely uncapturable by Western vocabulary
Non-binary identity isn’t the end point. It’s the opening chapter.
Resist: Dismantle Systems That Still Enforce the Colonial Binary
Colonial gender rules didn’t vanish with independence movements — they’re embedded in:
• legal systems
• immigration policy
• healthcare and diagnostic manuals
• census forms
• school curricula
• religious institutions
• workplace norms
Resistance means challenging the structures that still insist “male or female only,” whether that’s a government form or a doctor who hasn’t updated their training since 1995.
Resisting also means:
• supporting trans and gender-diverse activists, especially in the Global South
• pushing back against anti-trans legislation
• naming colonial roots when politicians claim “tradition”
• protecting queer youth from weaponised misinformation
• uplifting Indigenous and cultural gender identities that never fit neatly into Western labels
Resistance doesn’t have to be grand. Sometimes it’s simply refusing to squeeze your existence into a colonial checkbox.
Rebuild: Create Spaces That Reflect Our Realities, Not Colonial Fantasies
This is where the future actually changes — in the building.
Communities are already creating:
• digital archives of precolonial gender stories
• queer cultural centres focused on Indigenous gender systems
• youth programs teaching gender history beyond the binary
• diasporic networks sharing ancestral gender knowledge
• language revitalisation projects that include gender-diverse vocabulary
• online spaces where people can exist outside colonial restrictions
A decolonised gender future isn’t theoretical. It’s happening in real time. And we get to shape it.
The Goal Isn’t to Abandon the Present — It’s to Expand It
The binary will exist for some people, and that’s fine. The problem isn’t that the binary exists — it’s that it was forced on everyone. A decolonised future gives people options, not assignments.
What we’re aiming for is simple:
a world where gender is expansive enough to hold all of us — Indigenous, diasporic, queer, trans, non-binary, questioning, fluid — without apology.
The Gender Binary Wasn’t Inevitable. But Reclaiming Our Histories Is.
When people insist that non-binary or gender-diverse identities are “new,” what they really mean is: colonialism successfully erased a lot of history. But history doesn’t disappear just because someone burned a ceremony, banned a language, or rewrote a census. It lingers. It survives in stories, in families, in fragments, in elders, in diaspora communities, and — increasingly — in us.
The gender binary isn’t ancient. It isn’t universal. And it isn’t culturally neutral.
It was a political tool, engineered for control, exported through violence, and maintained by shame.
So when non-binary people today reclaim fluidity, plurality, or identities outside the man/woman model, we’re doing more than asserting who we are. We’re undoing a coloniser’s story about what humans are allowed to be. We’re reconnecting with the ways our ancestors lived, loved, and organised their worlds before empire tried to flatten everything into two tidy boxes.
Reclamation isn’t just resistance — it’s restoration.
And restoration is how we build futures with more room, more truth, and more humanity than the binary ever allowed.
This isn’t a trend.
It’s a return.
