This question can be adequately answered only when a range of phenomena, from ideas to technology, are considered. In this chapter, however, I want to focus on one particular element in this story: the granting of decisive authority to inner feelings. A moment’s reflection indicates that the doctor in the mid-twentieth century who saw what we now call gender dysphoria as a problem with the mind was working within a social imaginary that granted normative authority to the physical body. The body was