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History of gender

The term 'gender' in its current meaning is young: it was coined and disseminated in the second half of the twentieth century. Anyone who wants to understand the history of gender must distinguish between two different things: the centuries-old variation in male and female role expectations – which has always existed – and the twentieth-century theoretical edifice that detaches 'gender' from sex and presents it as an independent inner property.

Early history and antiquity

In virtually all known civilisations, society was organised around the difference between men and women – not as an arbitrary social construct, but as a practical recognition of a biological given with major consequences (reproduction, physical strength, the care of young children). Gender roles differed in their specifics, but the binary ordering itself is a constant. What some contemporary authors reconstruct from ancient sources as 'third gender categories' (eunuchs, gallae, ur.sal priests) were generally marginalised or cultically separated groups – not a recognised third sex, and not precursors of the modern transgender concept.

It is methodologically risky to apply modern identity categories retroactively to historical sources. A eunuch in Mesopotamia was not a 'non-binary person' in our sense; a man who dressed as a woman in a religious context was not a 'transgender woman'. Recent historical re-analyses (by, among others, Alice Dreger and Lyndsey Stonebridge) caution against this anachronism.

The Middle Ages and early modern period

Medieval European society was strongly hierarchically ordered, with clear roles for men and women. Women who passed as men (Joan of Arc, women who fought as soldiers) generally did so out of practical necessity – in order to exercise professions or freedoms otherwise out of reach. Retroactively declaring them 'trans' is an ideological projection, not a historical finding.

In the early modern period, anatomy developed into a serious science. Discoveries concerning sex organs, chromosomes and hormones yielded ever more precise knowledge about the biological dimorphism of the human body – knowledge that does not support the idea that sex is a spectrum.

The nineteenth and twentieth centuries: the rise of sexology

Nineteenth-century sexology (Krafft-Ebing, Ulrichs, later Hirschfeld) attempted to map sexual and gender variation systematically. Magnus Hirschfeld's Institut für Sexualwissenschaft in Berlin (1919–1933) is often invoked as a progressive milestone, but it also carried out experimental operations whose results were shocking by modern standards – an aspect that is often missing from nostalgic accounts.

The twentieth-century notion of 'gender' stems from the work of psychologist John Money (Johns Hopkins, 1950s). Money introduced the separation between 'sex' and 'gender' in part to legitimise experimental treatment of intersex children. His most infamous case, David Reimer, ended tragically: a boy who, after a botched circumcision, was raised by Money as 'a girl' could never identify with his imposed gender and later took his own life. This case is a warning precedent that gender identity cannot simply be socially imposed or substituted.

The second feminist wave (Simone de Beauvoir, later Judith Butler) used 'gender' to criticise the social role of women – rightly so. Butler's far-reaching thesis that sex itself is 'performative' and made-up is a philosophical position that has become hegemonic in her own field (gender studies), but enjoys no scientific support outside the humanities.

The twenty-first century: legal recognition, expansion and course correction

From around 2010 a remarkable phenomenon appeared: an explosive, localised increase in trans identifications, particularly among teenage girls in Western countries. This rise – inexplicable as merely 'finally room to be oneself' – points strongly to social and media-driven factors. At the same time, legislation was relaxed in many countries and young people gained access to puberty blockers, hormones and surgery.

In recent years these developments have come under pressure. The Swedish SBU report (2022), the Finnish COHERE decision, the Norwegian Ukom report (2023), the British Cass report (2024) and the WPATH Files (2024) have, in a short space of time, eroded the scientific foundation of the 'gender-affirmative' youth-care model. Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark and the UK have substantially adjusted their practice. See also: Cass Review, Detransition, Dutch Protocol.

It is striking that the Netherlands, the country where the original 'Dutch Protocol' was developed, is the slowest to follow this international reorientation. The weak evidence base, selection bias and missing control groups in the original Dutch research are being sharply criticised internationally.