Is Non-Binary New? Myths, History & the Global Roots of Gender Diversity
Is being non-binary some “new trend”? A TikTok-era invention? A Gen-Z plot to overthrow the gender norms of the world?
Not quite. (Though overthrowing norms does sound fun.)
The reality is this: non-binary and gender-diverse people have existed for as long as humans have been telling stories, carving language into stone, and trying to figure out who we are. The idea that gender comes in only two flavours, “male” and “female”, is far younger than many of the gender-diverse cultures that thrived for centuries.
For enbies and queer readers, this isn’t just a history lesson; it’s a little bit of cosmic reassurance. We didn’t pop into existence out of nowhere. We have ancestors. Precedents. Cultural lineages. Whole communities across the globe lived proudly outside the gender binary long before colonial powers tried to flatten everything into neat little boxes.
This blog explores some of the biggest myths about non-binary identity, especially the claim that it’s “new,” “Western,” or “made up”, and walks through objective historical evidence of gender diversity from cultures in Asia, the Pacific, the Americas, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. We’ll also look at how this history got buried, and how reclaiming it strengthens our understanding of gender today.
It’s educational, yes, but also a global adventure, and a reminder that gender has always been more than a binary, and we’re as much a part of human history as anyone.
Ready? Let’s time-travel.
Myth #1: “Non-Binary Identity Is New”
One of the most persistent claims floating around is that non-binary identity “appeared out of nowhere” in the last decade, as if we collectively woke up one morning and said, “You know what the world needs? More pronouns.”
Cute theory, but historically impossible.
The truth is far less convenient for anyone clinging to a binary-only worldview:
People living outside the binary have been here for thousands of years.
The language has changed, but the experience hasn’t. Let’s look at the actual evidence, not the sanitised, colonial-era version of history many of us were taught.
Ancient Mesopotamia (c. 2000 BCE)
The Oldest Gender Records We Have
If we go right back to the earliest written texts humanity produced, Sumerian and Akkadian cuneiform tablets, we already find descriptions of people who were “neither male nor female.” These weren’t fringe anomalies. They held religious roles, served in temples, and appeared in myths associated with highly respected deities.
In other words, before we had perfected the wheel, we already had non-binary people documented. Reminder that non-binary is not a TikTok-era concept.
Ancient Egypt
A Third Gender Officially Recognised
Middle Kingdom texts (roughly 4,000 years ago) describe three human genders: male, sekhet, and female.
And Sekhet wasn’t just a euphemism. It referred to a recognised category of people whose gender didn’t align with the reproductive binary at all. The hieroglyph used for sekhet doesn’t reference genitals, unlike the symbols for “male” and “female”, a subtle but telling detail that ancient Egyptians weren’t operating with a two-box system.
Ancient Egypt carved this into stone. Meanwhile, some modern commentators struggle to cope with neopronouns. History has a sense of humour.
Early Judaism
Six Gender Categories — Yes, Six
Long before modern queer theory, rabbinical scholars identified six sex/gender categories based on how different bodies and lives were presented in the community. These classifications weren’t treated as oddities; they were built into legal discussions about daily life, religious practice, and social participation.
So no, gender diversity does not conflict with “tradition.” It is tradition, in many cases. The problem is what colonisation and Western Christian norms later erased or reframed.
Ancient Greece & Rome
Gender Fluidity at the Core of Myth and Ritual
Ancient Greek mythology is basically a running commentary on gender expansiveness, gods shape-shift, swap genders, become animals, become other gods, and nobody blinks.
But beyond myth, real people lived beyond the binary, too.
In Rome, the Galli, priests of the goddess Cybele, were assigned male at birth but lived in feminine roles, adopted new names, wore elaborate clothing, and were viewed socially as a category outside “man” or “woman.” Roman authors didn’t have the vocabulary we use today, but they clearly acknowledged the Galli as neither.
This wasn’t niche or underground. It was a public religious role at the heart of Roman ritual life.
Central Eurasia
Ancient Gender Transition Practices
Scythian nomads, fierce horseback warriors who roamed the Eurasian steppe, recognised gender-nonconforming shamans as a distinct social category. They weren’t mocked; they were spiritually powerful.
Even more fascinating: Scythians used herbal mixtures with hormone-like effects (including plant-based anti-androgens) to help specific individuals feminise their bodies.
No, it wasn’t a modern clinic, but it was an early form of gender-affirming care.
When people today claim that gender transition is “unnatural,” history gently taps them on the shoulder and says: “Actually… no.
So, is non-binary new?
Absolutely not.
What is relatively new is having modern language to describe identities that have existed everywhere humans have existed.
The myth that non-binary identity is new survives because history has been filtered through colonial rule, Christian moral frameworks, Victorian discomfort, and modern censorship.
But when we actually look at the historical record, not the edited version, we see something straightforward:
Gender diversity is ancient.
The binary is the newcomer.
Myth #2: “Gender Diversity Is a Western Thing”
This one pops up all the time, the idea that gender diversity is some quirky Western phenomenon that sprouted out of Tumblr and pumpkin spice lattes.
The irony? Most of the world has had gender-expansive identities for centuries. Often much longer than the nations currently trying to legislate us out of existence.
If anything, the strict gender binary is the Western import, and a relatively recent one at that.
Let’s take a proper global look.
South Asia: Hijra, Kinnar, Aravani
A 4,000-Year-Old Third Gender Tradition
Gender diversity in South Asia didn’t start last week; it’s been documented since around 400 BCE, possibly earlier. Texts like the Kama Sutra reference a “third sex”, and the Hijra community, which includes transgender women, intersex people, and nonbinary folk assigned male at birth, has been part of the cultural landscape for thousands of years.
In many regions, Hijras are called Kinnar, a name linked to mythological beings associated with music, beauty, and blessing. They are invited into homes for births and weddings because their presence is believed to bring good fortune, a literal embodiment of celebration, not stigma.
It wasn’t until British colonial rule that Hijra people were criminalised, surveilled, and violently pushed to the margins. What had been a sacred role was suddenly recast as “improper,” which says more about Victorian morality than South Asian tradition.
The Pacific: Māhū, Fa’afafine, Fakaleiti
Gender as Community, Not Category
Polynesia and the wider Pacific have some of the most openly gender-inclusive histories in the world.
Māhū in Hawaiʻi and Tahiti are people who embody both masculine and feminine spirits. Before Christian missionaries arrived, māhū were teachers, healers, and vital cultural figures. Their role wasn’t “other”; it was integrated, respected, and sometimes revered.
In Samoa, fa’afafine (“in the manner of a woman”) are a recognised and visible gender group. Families don’t treat fa’afafine as unusual; they are considered part of the social fabric, contributing to family life and often serving in leadership roles within their aiga (extended family).
In Tonga, fakaleiti hold similar positions in traditional society.
It’s telling that the discomfort with these identities came after colonisation, not before.
Southeast Asia
The Bugis Five Genders of Indonesia
On the island of Sulawesi, the Bugis people recognise five genders, not as an act of rebellion, but as a cultural norm that has existed for centuries:
Makkunrai — “cis-women”
Oroané — “cis-men”
Calalai — “assigned female, living as a man”
Calabai — “assigned male, living as a woman”
Bissu — priestly figures embodying all genders simultaneously
The bissu have historically been central to ceremonies, coronations, and the region's spiritual life. They weren’t tucked away in the margins; they were at the centre of cultural power.
Imagine a society where gender-diverse priests crowned kings. Meanwhile, Western commentators still debate whether non-binary people “exist.” The contrast speaks for itself.
Middle East & North Africa
Khanith, Mukhannathun, and Other Gender-Variant Roles
Gender diversity in the Middle East didn’t magically appear in the 21st century.
In Oman, the khanith (also spelt xanith) are recognised as an intermediate gender. Khanith traditionally dress in a blend of masculine and feminine styles, have unique social permissions, and occupy a space that neither men nor women fully inhabit. They have the legal rights of men, but the social mobility of women, a category entirely their own.
Earlier in Islamic history, the mukhannathun were gender-nonconforming people noted in early texts, sometimes serving as musicians, entertainers, or household attendants. They weren’t always embraced, but their existence was not denied.
Gender-diverse people have always been part of the region’s story, even if modern politics tries to pretend otherwise.
Pre-Colonial Africa
Chibados, Spirit Mediums, and Decolonised Memory
Across the African continent, pre-colonial cultures had far more fluid gender norms than many assume.
Among the Ndongo people in what is now Angola, the chibados were male-born individuals who lived as women, served as diviners, led rituals, and were part of royal courts. These were not hidden or shameful identities; they held status and power. Queen Nzinga herself was documented with chibados among her advisors and household.
European colonisers were baffled when they first encountered this, because it didn’t align with their imported Christian binaries. So they did what colonisers often do: reclassified it as “immoral,” suppressed it, and rewrote the narrative entirely.
Much of Africa’s gender-diverse history has been obscured through this process, but it’s still there if you look beyond colonial archives.
Indigenous Americas
Two-Spirit Identities Across a Continent
Before European contact, hundreds of Indigenous nations across North America recognised more than two genders. While the modern umbrella term Two-Spirit was created in 1989, the roles themselves predate colonisation by centuries.
Different nations had distinct identities:
Nádleehí (Navajo)
Winkté (Lakota)
Hemaneh (Cheyenne)
Ałk’idáa (Chinook)
These weren’t merely “accepted”; many were honoured. Two-Spirit people often served as healers, storytellers, matchmakers, mediators, and ceremonial leaders.
The violent suppression of Two-Spirit roles came with colonisation, Christianity, and forced assimilation. But today, communities across the Indigenous Americas, and most prominently on Turtle Island, are actively reclaiming and reviving these identities.
Latin America
Muxe and Other Pre-Colonial Gender Traditions
Among the Zapotec people of Oaxaca, Mexico, the muxe (pronounced “moo-shay”) represent a longstanding third gender category: assigned male at birth, living as women or in roles outside the binary.
Muxe identity predates Spanish colonisation and remains deeply respected. Juchitán, a city with a strong muxe presence, even tells a local creation story about the town receiving “extra” third-gender souls from the patron saint, a charming reminder that gender diversity is woven into cultural imagination, not added to it.
Across Central and South America, other Indigenous nations also recognised gender variance long before European contact.
So, is gender diversity a Western invention?
Not even remotely.
If anything, the strict binary is the Western export that has been carried globally through colonisation, missionary movements, and Victorian moral codes.
Most cultures had, and many continue to have, their own rich, complex, deeply rooted gender identities. These traditions aren’t gimmicks or “recent trends.” They’re cultural heritage.
When people claim gender diversity is Western, what they’re really revealing is how thoroughly colonial history erased the global stories that don’t fit a binary mould.
The world has always been gender-diverse. Western history refuses to admit it.
When History Got Erased: Colonialism and the Binary Narrative
If non-binary and gender-diverse identities have been documented on almost every continent for thousands of years, you might reasonably ask:
“So why didn’t I learn any of this in school?”
Short answer: colonialism.
Long answer: colonialism, Christianity, Victorian morality, Western anthropology, censorship, and centuries of deliberate “forgetting” (aka erasure).
The rigid gender binary many of us grew up with isn’t some universal truth. It’s a colonial export aggressively spread across the world through empire, missionization, and assimilation policies. If you want to know why gender diversity feels “new” in some countries, it’s because many powerful institutions spent the last few centuries trying to make it disappear.
Let’s unpack how that erasure happened.
The Colonial Playbook
Step One: Define “Normal.”
Step Two: Punish Everything Else.
When European empires expanded into Asia, Africa, the Pacific, and the Americas, they didn’t just claim land. They claimed the right to define morality, gender roles, family structures, and social hierarchies.
Colonisers often encountered gender-diverse groups and, instead of documenting them accurately, they reacted with horror, disgust, or bewilderment, then set out to eliminate what they didn’t understand.
A few examples (unfortunately, there are many, many more):
The Americas: Two-Spirit Identities Targeted for Erasure
Before colonisation, gender-diverse identities existed in most Indigenous nations across North America. Two-Spirit people were often leaders, healers, or mediators.
Colonisers saw this and decided it was “unnatural.”
Some missionaries wrote about needing to “destroy” these roles. And in many places, they did so through forced Christianisation, coercive boarding schools, outlawing ceremonies, and systematic suppression of Indigenous knowledge.
The result? Entire nations had their gender histories fractured, and many of those traditions are only now being revived.
South Asia: Hijra Criminalised Under British Rule
Hijras were respected for centuries, then the British arrived with Victorian gender norms and decided they were a threat to “social order.” In 1871, the British Raj created the Criminal Tribes Act, explicitly targeting Hijras as inherently suspicious, immoral, and deviant.
This wasn’t passive stigma; it was structural.
Hijras were denied legal rights, surveilled, and banned from performing cultural roles, and punished for simply existing.
A thriving, ancient gender-diverse community was pushed into precarity almost overnight. The shame wasn’t theirs; it was imported.
The Pacific: Missionaries and the “Civilising” Project
Māhū in Hawaiʻi and fa’afafine in Samoa once had visible, respected roles. But with European missionaries came new laws, new punishments, and new moral frameworks.
Many Pacific countries only recently began undoing colonial-era anti-LGBT laws that weren’t Indigenous at all but introduced by Britain, France, and the U.S.
The narrative that “gender diversity is not part of our culture” is a colonial aftershock, not a truth.
Africa: Gender Variance Reduced, Renamed, or Condemned
In many African societies, gender-nonconforming individuals once served as spiritual leaders, healers, or intermediaries.
Then colonisers arrived and:
imposed Christian gender norms
redefined local gender roles as “sinful” or “primitive”
outlawed relationships outside heterosexual marriage
rewrote Indigenous histories through missionary schools
The chibados of Angola, once prominent in royal courts, are a perfect example. Their status collapsed under Portuguese rule, not because local culture rejected them, but because colonial morality demanded conformity.
Across the continent, pre-colonial gender diversity didn’t vanish naturally; it was pushed out by force.
Middle East & North Africa: Erasure Through Translation and Moral Panic
Gender-diverse people like the khanith and mukhannathun appeared in early Islamic and pre-Islamic accounts. But many Western scholars mistranslated or sanitised these roles, seeing only what aligned with their own frameworks.
Later, colonialism, often accompanied by Christian missionary work, added another layer of suppression.
So when someone says “gender variance isn’t part of Middle Eastern culture,” what they’re really repeating is a colonial-era rewriting of history.
Europe: The Binary Tightens at Home
Even in Europe, the strict binary is relatively recent. Medieval and early modern communities had more fluid understandings of bodies, sex, and gender than Victorian-era historians would admit.
But by the 1800s, industrialisation, nationalism, and church influence created a cultural environment obsessed with classification and purity of race, sex, gender, and morality. Anything that didn’t fit the two-gender system was medicalised, punished, policed, or erased.
The binary wasn’t ancient. It was modern and exported globally.
So why does the binary feel so universal today?
Because colonialism had centuries to rewrite the record.
Gender-diverse histories were:
burned
banned
mistranslated
pathologised
erased from textbooks
replaced with a European interpretation of “normality”
By the time the 20th century rolled around, many people had never even heard of their own culture’s pre-colonial gender traditions. That silence wasn’t natural; it was constructed.
And yet, these identities survived. Quietly. Carefully. Often in ceremony, community memory, or underground practice.
What we’re seeing today isn’t a “new identity.” It’s a re-emergence.
As communities reclaim language, culture, and pride, gender-diverse histories are resurfacing. People aren’t “making up” new genders, they’re remembering old ones.
The binary isn’t the baseline. The binary is the interruption.
What came before and what’s returning now is much bigger, more complex, and far more human.
Reclaiming Our Genderful History: We Have Always Been Here
By this point, the idea that non-binary identity is “new” should feel… flimsy. Not because we’ve invented clever counterarguments, but because history doesn’t support the myth. If anything, it’s the rigid gender binary that’s the historical outlier, a relatively recent system that got globalised through colonisation, religion, and nation-building.
When you put the whole picture back together, the Hijra communities of South Asia, the māhū of Hawaiʻi, the bissu of Indonesia, Two-Spirit nations across Turtle Island, chibados in Angola, muxes in Oaxaca, ancient Egyptian third-gender categories, the Galli of Rome, a different truth emerges entirely:
Gender diversity isn’t a trend.
It’s part of our shared human story.
For non-binary, gender-diverse, and trans readers, this isn’t just a history lesson; it’s grounding. There’s a particular kind of comfort in knowing that our identities didn’t appear overnight. They have lineage. Continuity. They’re not hypothetical, experimental, or whimsical. They’re ancient, lived, and rooted in culture.
And equally important: these histories don’t need to match our exact modern definitions for them to matter. A Scythian shaman didn’t call themselves “non-binary,” but they lived in a social category outside the man/woman binary. A māhū elder may not use the term “enby,” but they embody both masculine and feminine spirit. These aren’t one-to-one translations; they’re reminders that human gender has always been wider than two boxes.
What changed wasn’t us; it was the world around us.
For several centuries, entire systems were built to make gender diversity disappear.
What you’re witnessing today isn’t invention; it’s re-emergence.
Communities are reconnecting with their pre-colonial gender traditions. Languages are being revived. Ceremonies are coming back. Queer and trans people are telling stories that were nearly erased. Younger generations are refusing to shrink themselves to fit old frameworks. Elders are sharing what survived underground. A collective remembering is happening, and that’s powerful.
For allies, the invitation is simple:
If you want to understand gender diversity today, look beyond the narrow slice of Western history many of us were taught. The real story is global. It is older than nation-states. It is richer than binaries. And it belongs to far more people than English grammar ever allowed for.
For us, the enbies, gender-diverse people, trans folks, and the wider LGBTQ+ community the takeaway is even clearer:
We have never been “new.”
We have never been “a trend.”
We have always been part of humanity.
And we always will be.
This history isn’t something we need to justify ourselves with. We don’t exist because ancient civilisations “allow” us to. We exist because we’re human, and humanity has always been more expansive than the binary could hold.
What we’re doing now, living openly, naming ourselves, reclaiming our stories, is not breaking from tradition.
It’s returning to it.
