An important thing to remember is that the convention of associating transness with “Westerness” is a classic tool for depicting transness as problematic, intrusive, unnatural, and culturally insensitive.

The truth is that while, yes, what we call transness in English today isn’t culturally uniform, people like us exist everywhere. We exist naturally. We’re not an expression of any dominant culture, empire, or regime. And we’re historically a profoundly disempowered population.