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