If it helps: I’m another trans person, approximately agree with that line, and think one expression of it is that in those indigenous cultures, trans people were held to the norms of their target gender as stringently as everyone else. I don’t know of historic cultures that do mixed-gender role mixing the way we do. AFAIK transition, in cultures that had it, was uncommon and a way for someone to move from one tightly-maintained box to another tightly-maintained box.
In other words, I don’t think “physical sex” is just one thing—for example, it seems “postmodern” and “bizarre” to me that both some pro-trans and some anti-trans people claim that taking estrogen doesn’t make a trans woman more female than she was before—but I think it’s more real and relevant than current culture admits for. (I think this came about as an enforcement mechanism for women’s rights, so on net I bet it’s a good thing.)
If it helps: I’m another trans person, approximately agree with that line, and think one expression of it is that in those indigenous cultures, trans people were held to the norms of their target gender as stringently as everyone else. I don’t know of historic cultures that do mixed-gender role mixing the way we do. AFAIK transition, in cultures that had it, was uncommon and a way for someone to move from one tightly-maintained box to another tightly-maintained box.
In other words, I don’t think “physical sex” is just one thing—for example, it seems “postmodern” and “bizarre” to me that both some pro-trans and some anti-trans people claim that taking estrogen doesn’t make a trans woman more female than she was before—but I think it’s more real and relevant than current culture admits for. (I think this came about as an enforcement mechanism for women’s rights, so on net I bet it’s a good thing.)