In every generation it seems there are new marginalised groups whose members are gaining traction and visibility and are unnecessarily treated with suspicion, fear and even hostility. When I was growing up, it was gay people with emerging rights and representation. Luckily for me, before my birth, it was adoptees and orphans who were gaining ground and receiving push-back from those who feared the intrusion of the new.
Society's amygdala was activated against both of those groups among others. This is far from inevitable but there is a parallel with the way both adoptees and gay people have been treated and distrusted to the way gender-nonconforming people's identities are being called into question today. There is a new visibility of trans, non-binary and gender-nonconforming people - and not just as punchlines on sitcoms, perceived as outliers who can be othered precisely because they don't conform to gender norms.
