To be trans is an experience bound up with economic struggle. There cannot be one without the other. - Shon Faye

The twenty-first century has seen wider acknowledgment of the fact that human sexuality is much more complex than the rigid and unchanging categories of heterosexual, homosexual or bisexual can express; the experiences of trans people are just one part of this increased sexual diversity. In the case of non-binary people – whose gender identities and expressions may sit outside of the categories of man and woman, or move between the two – the nineteenth-century categories of human sexuality make little sense – which is why the term ‘queer’ has risen in popularity.

When we talk about trans people, we’re usually referring to individuals who were either recorded as male at birth but who understand themselves to be women (trans women) or, vice versa, were recorded as female at birth but who understand themselves to be men (). Not all trans people, however, find simply moving between the pre-existing categories of man and woman satisfactory, accurate or desirable. Such trans people, who are less well understood, generally unsettle mainstream society more than trans men and women, because they challenge not only the prevailing idea that birth genitals and gender are inseparable, but also the idea that there are just two gender categories. Often, these people are accused of making up their experience out of a need for attention or a desire to feel special – though in reality the political, economic and social costs for such ‘non-binary’ trans people (who don’t straightforwardly see themselves as men or women) can be immense.

One of feminism’s central ideas: that gender is a reductive trap which limits freedom and curbs individuality, forcing people to deform themselves and their desires in the service of an exploitative and violent system.