In 2014, transgender actress Laverne Cox was on Time Magazine's front cover, with a headline heralding "the transgender tipping point".
She's one of countless transgender people who have stepped into the public eye in recent years to fight for an equal place in society.
Some of their names are familiar: Olympian Caitlyn Jenner, actor Elliott Page, activist Chelsea Manning.
Australia, too, has seen a rise in trans visibility and significant social change around gender and identity.
Catherine McGregor, one of Australia's most senior military figures, publicly came out as trans in 2013, backed by the Australian Defence Force.
Last year, former AFL player Danielle Laidley walked down the Brownlow red carpet in a floor-length white gown, with media largely reporting the moment with positivity.
But progress hasn't been straightforward. As trans people have become more visible, there's been a backlash against trans rights.
Trans athletes, for example, have become a focal point for fear and hatred. And trans women, in particular, trans women of colour, still face disproportionate rates of violence.
Underlying much of this is a notion that existing outside the binary of male and female is somehow new.
But history shows a different story: actually, trans people have been around for a really long time.
Trans history left out
The term transgender, or "trans" for short, is used to describe a person whose gender identity and gender expression differs from the sex they were assigned at birth.
And it's nothing new.
In South Asia, for example, Hijra people have been recognised as a third gender since about 400 BC.
In southern Italy, "i femminielli" — literally, "little female men" — date back to the 1500s.
And in Australia, a history of trans and gender diverse people could go back thousands of years.
First Nations experiences of gender aren't homogenous. There are hundreds of Indigenous nations that make up this continent with huge variations in beliefs, traditions and experiences of gender.
History books haven't always recorded these, however.
Macquarie University historian and Wiradjuri trans person Sandy O'Sullivan tells ABC RN's History listen that "containers … were forced on us as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people".
The process of colonisation "not only contained but restricted anything that didn't fit within it, didn't belong … denying the complexity of who we are as people," Professor O'Sullivan says.
"Gender is a really good example of that."
Indigenous queer and trans experiences simply weren't recorded by colonisers, Professor O'Sullivan says.
"People often say, what evidence do you have that Indigenous people have always been trans? And I say, what evidence do you have that Indigenous people have always been cis[gender]?"
There are some complexities with knowing what happened, but there's evidence of a strong history of gender diversity on the Tiwi islands, where many trans people use the term "sistergirl" or "brotherboy".
One of the most famous Tiwi sistergirls is Crystal Love Johnson, a well-known drag performer and trans advocate.
"We've got an LGBT community back on Tiwi," Johnson says.
"On the weekend, we go down the beach, go out hunting, and we come together and we talk about things like what's happening in the community … and just make sure that our wellbeing's all good."
'Unprecedented in the annals of the whole world'
In colonial Australia, one of the most famous examples of gender transgression is quartz miner Edward De Lacy Evans, who was born in Ireland around 1830.
He boarded a ship to Australia under a woman's name but, soon after disembarking, he re-introduced himself as Evans, historian Robin Eames explains.
There were no ID cards for changing your name in the 19th century, Eames says.
"You just kind of walked up and said '[I'm] Edward De Lacey Evans' and everyone said, 'Okay, sure'."
In the following two decades, Evans married and separated from three women while working as a miner, blacksmith and ploughman across Victoria's goldfields.
He sustained a head injury at work and was taken to hospital. Perhaps as a result of the injury, he was later committed to a lunacy ward. After refusing to take off his clothes for weeks, he was eventually forcibly stripped and outed.
It sparked a news scandal.
On September 4, 1879, the Bendigo Advertiser reported an "extraordinary case of concealment of sex".
The paper called Evans "one of the most unparalleled impostors … which has ever been the province of the press of these colonies to chronicle, and we might even add is unprecedented in the annals of the whole world".
Demeaning photographs accompanied the news story, Eames says.
"They created a little postcard … that had superimposed Evans' face onto his wife's face, so that it was like a … double vision of him as a man and him as a woman … that was sold as a curiosity."
Another figure who gained significant media attention was Gordon Lawrence. In 1888, Lawrence attended the Melbourne Exhibition Building, "dressed in women's clothes [and] perfume", Noah Riseman, history professor at the Australian Catholic University, explains.
There was a "big dramatic moment when it was revealed that this was someone assigned male at birth, who was presenting as a woman", Professor Riseman says.
"Gordon Lawrence was then arrested and … convicted of vagrancy, which was the most common charge then for people who were dressed in a different gender."
Eames says that in the hundreds of newspaper articles covering the cases of Lawrence, Evans and others, the reported reactions of local people contrast starkly from those of authorities.
"The level of support for people crossing gender categories was a lot higher than I think we might assume it to be.
"Locally, people could gain the support of their communities if they were seen to be members of the community who were benefiting the community, who were part of the productive workforce, who were respectable people, who were friendly, who would come and have a pint at the pub with you," Eames says.
Medical progress and increasing visibility
As the 20th century unfolded, medical professionals in Australia started paying more attention to trans people.
A 1937 Western Australian medical journal article is "one of the first definitive cases of someone actually being classified that way in Australia".
By the 1950s, gender affirming treatment was becoming available to trans people.
Before accessing surgery, they were put through a "real life test", which entailed living for two years, 24-7, in their affirmed gender, "which was not easy", Professor Riseman says.
"We didn't have anti-discrimination law back then. It's dangerous enough for trans people nowadays, let alone 40, 50 years ago, where you could be attacked on the streets."
And if you were approved for gender affirmation surgery, "you were expected to go stealth and just disappear quietly in society".
But not everyone accepted the idea of going stealth.
In the 1950s, the first global trans celebrity, American GI Christine Jorgensen, captured the attention of the world's press.
"I did my own thing during a period when people were not doing their own thing," Jorgensen said in 1981 interview on US talk show Hour Magazine.
"I had no idea it was going to affect the rest of the world."
The Australian media frequently reported on Jorgensen's life in a positive way and, for many, she was the first trans person they had ever heard about.
Then in the 1960s, performer Carlotta burst onto the Australian cabaret scene before becoming a mainstream TV star.
On ABC's Four Corners program in 1974, Carlotta spoke openly about being transgender and about having gender affirming surgery.
She said she'd always known she was female. "I'm a girl. That's it … I'm very happy."
Time to show the public 'we're not weird'
By the 1970s, Australia had its first publicly funded Transgender Health Clinic (now the Monash Gender Clinic), and the first transgender social organisation, Seahorse, was founded by Rosemary Langton.
Activist, academic and one of the ABC's longest serving employees, Julie Peters, was an early member.
"In my late teens, early 20s. I was really trying to fight being trans. I just thought this is going to lead to disaster in my life," Peters says.
"But I realised that, you know, this is crazy. You can't fight it. This is such a powerful force in your psyche."
Through Seahorse, she met another trans woman who had transitioned while working at Australia Post. It signalled to Peters that another life was possible.
"I was really amazed, actually. I met somebody who actually had a normal sort of life who was trans."
But there were still challenges in the Australian workforce.
In a 1982 ABC Radio interview, sociologist and activist Roberta Perkins estimated that around ten per cent of the trans community in Australia was unemployed, despite being skilled, and pointed the finger at "prejudice in the workforce".
Discrimination wasn't restricted to the workplace.
In 1979, Sydney woman Noelena Tame was kicked out of her women's lawn bowls club after some members discovered she was trans.
She took her case to the anti-discrimination board but, because there weren't legal protections for trans people at that time, she was unsuccessful.
In response, Tame formed a support group for trans women, the Australian Transsexuals Association, which, in 1982, led Australia's first known trans rights protest, in Manly, Sydney.
Roberta Perkins, who was a member, spoke again to ABC Radio about the protest.
"The time has now come … to show the public that we're not weird, that we're not freaks or anything else."
The rise in visibility, and discrimination, led to the formation of activist groups all over the country from the 1980s.
The following decade, in July 1999, on Magnetic Island, the lands of the Wulgurukaba people, Aunty Vanessa chaired the first National Indigenous Sistergirl Forum, where they discussed the needs of First Nations transgender people.
More recently, Australia has seen birth certificate reforms remove surgery requirements and introduce non-binary genders. And trans healthcare has moved away from "that old pathologised model", Professor Riseman says.
Crystal Love Johnson says it's still hard reckoning with prejudice from within and outside of her Tiwi community — but it's a challenge she'll continue to push back against.
Her message is loud, powerful and simple: "We're all equal here."
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