New, perhaps, to those not paying attention-

In North Carolina, where obsessions with sex and gender are commonplace among the ruling class, even the governor, Pat McCrory, said he knew nothing of transgender North Carolinians when he ran for the office in 2012. The NC-based evangelicalist, Franklin Graham, told Charlotte Business Journal in May that there are only one hundred such "perverts" in the entire state.

Both, of course, are partly in error. Trans people are nothing new.

Here's a fascinating article on the first trans character in Western fiction, from Djuna Barnes' 1928 novel, Nightwood.

Henry Bemis' profile of Barnes is here.