The Babylonians developed the first written numerical system
Back in 3400 BC
Their system was base 60, which we still use today for telling timeBut, um, for everything else we ditched that in favor of
The base 10 system
Which the Egyptians came up with
A few hundred years later
And this was rounded out by a notation for zero
Courtesy of the Mayans a couple hundred years after that
Giving us the numbers zero through nine
Upon which is built our entire mathematical architecture
Now
Before this it′s not like humans didn't have a concept of numbers
Any more than we didn′t have a concept of time
Before clocks were invented
We've understood natural numbers just fine
Since before recorded history
It's easy to understand after all that if you have one chicken
And your neighbor has two
That they have more chickens than you do
And it′s just as easy to show someone that one plus two equals three
Because we can see our chicken
We can see their two chickens
And then, as if by magic-
Oh no!
Now we now have three blood stained chickens
This is simple and observable mathematics
We didn′t need language to make sense of this
Beyond this, though
Things get abstract and theoretical really fucking fast
And I'm not even talking astrophysics here
Just getting into numbers larger than 60 or 100
Poses serious problems in a world
Where you don′t often have 60 or 100 of anything
And inevitably somewhere adrift in the abyss of history
Is the first human who faced the challenge of trying to
Describe the concept of one million to a poor friend
Who was, understandably
Less interested in a number with no practical application
Than they were in society's state of the art advances in
Avoiding being eaten by fucking lions
But in this one person′s brain was an idea
Of a number bigger than anyone had counted
Something that they knew was real
That they knew was out there
But which they couldn't hold up and show anyone
Which they couldn′t even clearly explain
Because the language had not been developed yet
And if, as has been theorized, our species' intelligence
Is intimately tied to our capacity for language
Then an abstract concept without a word attached to it
Well, it might as well not even exist
When I was born
I was given a teddybear
That I called Teddy, because some days you just phone it in
And I took Teddy with me everywhere
And one day, when I was around four
My mum and I were getting ready to go out
And mum asked, "Where's Teddy."
And I said, "Upstairs."
And Mum said, "Well, go and get him then, we′re leaving."
And I remember feeling jarred by this
It was an unfamiliar, visceral feeling
Powerful enough for me to still be processing it
Way, way in the background, thirty years later
I said, "Teddy′s not a him."
And mum said, "Oh. Her then."
And I said, "No, that's still not right."
"Teddy′s not a her either," I said
Struggling to find a word for what I knew Teddy was
A word that I felt must exist
Because on a purely conceptual level I could imagine it
And because my experience thus far had been
To point at something and ask what it is
And to be told
Oh, that's a table, that′s a chair
That's a deactivated exploder for a mark ten torpedo
And I just assumed, naturally
That in my four long years on the planet
I had yet to come across the word for when something doesn′t quite fit
Into the girl box
Or the boy box
But ha- what did I know?
Now, I know
Teddy was
(Is, actually, I still have them
They are sitting in the next room as I record this)
Teddy is just clumps of fluff stuffed into a furry bag
There isn't any objective truth to be found
As to whether Teddy is a girl or a boy
Or something else
But that's not the point
The point is
That this is one of my earliest memories
This, not skinning my knee or losing my mum in the supermarket
Is what has stuck with me
When I was four years old
Before I had any exposure to anyone beyond the gender binary
In real life or in books or on the TV
Before I even had a concept of what it might mean
Socially and politically
Gendering Teddy felt like it went against something tangible
That apparently only I could see
This is why I have so little patience for people who smirk and say
That we don′t need new words to describe gender
The reason that these people
Constantly belittle and undermine the words
That trans and non-binary people use
To describe themselves and the world around them
Is not because the words are meaningless
It′s because these people know fine well that words are powerful
And dangerous
And they know that their last hope of stalling progress
Is preventing people from having access to language that
Validates and vindicates their experience
Not to mention the frankly fucking ludicrous idea
That new words somehow erase their identity
Rather than give them a deeper sense of understanding of it
And the notion that
It is somehow unnatural to invent new words for things
As if that hasn't been one of the leading preoccupations of humanity
For the past 6000 years at least
We are trying to do something
That cannot be accomplished without a new language
Without it, the concepts that make up vital parts of our identities
Are formless and amorphous
Without it
It becomes impossible to build support networks and communities
Or to be taken seriously when your rights are being violated
Or to tell the people you love who you actually are
Or to even recognize yourself in the fucking mirror
And that lonely, early human
Who struggled to explain the concept of a million
If they could, maybe they would have said
You know what, you′re right
We don't need a formal numerical system
To know that one plus two equals three
But we will need one
To build a worldwide communication network
To point telescopes into the darkest parts of space
To plunge with no regard for our own safety
Into the deepest parts of the sea
Maybe some of you think it is unnecessary
Even dangerous to be coming up with new words like this
And in the process validating things that you don′t believe in
Things that you can't see
But for me, I can′t see it as anything except progress
New words are new tools
Which can be used to build a marginally better world right now
And maybe
Many thousands of years in the future
These new tools that we drop and break and wield clumsily
Will be used in ways that we can't even conceive of today
To build miraculous, unimaginable structures
With our distant descendants
Standing atop them
Being the people that we always wanted to be
