The Babylonians developed the first written numerical system, in 3400BC
Their system was base 60, which we still use today for telling time, but for everything else we ditched it in favour 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 0 through 9, upon which is built our entire modern 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 since before recorded history
It's easy to understand that if you have 1 chicken and your neighbour has 2, they have more chickens than you
It's just as easy to show someone that 1 plus 2 equals 3
Because we can see our chicken
And we can see their two chickens
And then, as if by magic, now we have three blood-stained chickens
This is simple and observable mathematics
And we didn't need language to make sense of this

Beyond this, though, things get abstract and theoretical real fast
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 a fucking lion

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 hadn't been developed yet
And if, as has been theorised, our species' intelligence is intimately tied to our capacity for language
Then an abstract concept without a word attached to it
Might as well not 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
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 "Go and get him then, we're leaving"
And I remember being 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."
Hmm
No
That's still not right, I though
"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 be told it was a table, or a chair, or a deactivated exploder for a mark ten torpedo
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 boy box
Or the girl box

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
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 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

And this is why I have so little patience for people who smirk and say we don't need new words to describe gender
The reason
That these people constantly belittle and undermine the words 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 lived experience
Not to mention that frankly fucking ludicrous idea that new words somehow erase their identity rather than give them a deeper 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 even to recognise yourself in the fucking mirror

That lonely, early human who struggled to explain the concept of a million
If they could, maybe they would have said
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
And 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 you don't believe in
Things 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 we can't even conceive of today
To build miraculous, unimaginable structures
With our distant descendants
Standing atop of them
Being the people we always wanted to be