The ancient Sumerian legend the Epic of Gilgamesh contains one of the earliest known examples of a “flood myth”. Unlike in the Biblical story of Noah, in this account the Gods seek to destroy most of humanity not because they are sinful but because they are annoying and bothersome.

We generally imagine the universe as existing in four dimensions, three spatial plus time, commonly referred to as the space-time continuum. As humans we are able perceive the three spatial dimensions simultaneously but we can only experience the present moment, with the past no longer reachable and the future uncertain. A hypothetical fifth dimensional intelligence, however, would be able to perceive past, present, and future in the same manner that we can observe length, width, and height. Foreknowledge of the future comes at a terrible cost; since they already know what will happen, such an intelligence in effect becomes a slave of fate robbed of free will. Humans, however, do have free will and, through their choices, can decide which future occurs and, in effect, select an entirely different universe to come into existence. To the fifth dimensional intelligence this constant shifting of futures, of universes, would be incredibly disorienting. It may therefore be tempting for them to, like the vengeful gods of ancient Mesopotamia, seek to destroy humanity all together and insure the continuity of a single stable universe for all time. However imagine that this fifth directional intelligent exists incorporeally lacking a physical body and that they are not capable of collapsing the universal quantum wavefunction that gives way to physical reality. If conscious observers on Earth are necessary for physical reality to exist then the end of life on Earth would mean the end of all reality. The fifth dimensional intelligence may or may not understand why this is but it will constrain them from taking any action they will lead to the destruction of humanity. It is therefore in their interest to keep humanity alive indefinitely but confined to the Earth where their choices will not be able to change the future of the wider universe in a meaningful way that would bother them.

This intelligence does not have a real existence within the material realm and so cannot physically interact directly with humanity but can manipulate humanity though more subtle ways, such as by masquerading as angels, demons, aliens, and or other supernatural hallucinations. These entities are able to foresee only the current trajectory of the given universe and so are not able to predict alternative courses with complete accuracy but can instead seek to protect certain individuals who are necessary to insure a desired universe continues and to disrupt individuals for whom an undesirable future (to them) relies on. It may therefore be that these entities are responsible for, among many other things, gender dysphoria and are using it as a means of altering the futures of certain individual humans who would be detrimental to their plans. Prehaps they cause us to be born the wrong gender or maybe they somehow induce it after birth, the point though is that they sabotage the lives we would have otherwise had.

The point I am making is not necessarily that we must seek to defying these malevolent entities by repping - no, it may be that asserting our true gender identities is to act in defiance of their demonic plans. Indeed they may also be behind the sudden cultural and political shifts against trans individuals right to express ourselves and indeed our right to exist. The point is that each of us were once destined for greatness only to be struck down by the gods but it is still possible for each of us, though tremendous will power, to reclaim that destiny and usher in the future of our choosing.

I close by returning to mythology with the reconstructed formulaic Indo-European sentence, “*(h₁e) gʷʰent h₁ógʷʰim” traces of which are found in nearly every Eurasian culture and which means either “he slew the serpent” or “she slew the serpent” with the gender of the monster slayer varying over time and often shifting within cultures; the recorded gender may change but the hero remains the same.