The same way Alexander the Great or Telemachus or Sappho or any other ancient Mediterranean were not gay in the modern sense.
Western culture's version of trans/gay/lesbian/LGBTQ+ (awful term imo) is an artifact of that culture. And just because we look and act the same as others does not mean we are. It's like lumping the Middle East into one category -- when some inside wouldn't even consider themselves a part of it.
E.g. just because I enjoy sucking dick does not mean I'm part of the [insert country that I have nothing in common with]'s gay community. And frankly I don't want to be lumped in with it.
Wrong. Absolutely not. There is nothing similar between the lives of a trans person in the Middle East or South Asia and those in the West.
I don't have first hand knowledge, but actual trans people I've heard from who have lived in both South Asia and the West and are in community with trans people on both sides of that divide do not echo that sentiment, and particularly this upthread idea, "These are not trans people like you see in the anglosphere", has been attributed to a combination of a extremely similar (but with different local names used) process of third-sexing in both South Asian and anglo cultures plus orientalism applied by anglo observers to South Asian cultures and the third-sexing going on within it.
I think the absolutionist path is wrong. I don't care about the respect or acknowledgment of the monolith of the "other." I do care about the people in my community and those I interact with on a regular basis. In that vein, I have found it useful to not be so inflexible about things. The majority of people are open to getting along if you get along with them. The rest are either working from a memory of bad experiences or have just simply been surrounded too long in a dogma they've adopted as their own. But these are not intractable problems.
What is an almost intractable problem is having all of my efforts be made moot, when a bunch of hell-raisers with nothing else on their mind besides "me and my problems" decide to make noise and drive even greater decisiveness.
I would like for Western individualism and cultural imperialism and disintegration to leave me and my people the fuck alone. I don't need your help or your ideas or to be saved from my foolishness -- thank you -- I'm doing well with my own devices.