What do you mean by society moving quicker than science? Transgender people have existed before most scientific advancements. They existed in ancient Greece, they exist in Norse Mythology... They were persecuted in several government systems in the past such as Germany, they have always been here. It's just that social media and the Internet brings more information to people than ever before. So instead of never having met a trans person in your life more people are being introduced to them than ever before. Which also means some people who may have never understood what was going on with themselves and why they felt so different than the boxes society around them was placing them into. I know I'm a guy, I was born one and have always been one. If you look at Women's athletics, say the Olympics you will see many women that have naturally occuring high levels of testosterone that may be higher than your average male. You will also find men who have extremely low testosterone. So scientifically I see it as a blend that the hormones in our bodies have naturally created showing that what we define as man, and woman doesn't encompass everything. Only when we try to put someone in a group do we start to think that there is something abnormal about a person having higher or lower testosterone. Then you can get into the facet of sexual parts. 1.7/100 people are born with intersexual traits. If we say a person has to be a man or a woman, then there is a 1.7% chance a person doesn't fit into either box at birth. I see no reason that person shouldnt be able to live a happy life, not be treated the same as everyone else around them.

I'm not a trans person, I am not well educated on all of it because it isn't something I had to educate myself on. But using that number there, scientifically there were 5.78 million people in the U.S. that were born outside the box of Man or Woman. To put that into perspective, 28 of the 50 states have less people in them, than the number of people born with intersex traits.

So when someone downplays them and acts like they shouldn't exist, maybe it's easier to look at it as saying all of a U.S. state shouldn't exist simply because they were born there.

Note: most of this was focused on intersex, not gender.. but I think it helps open the mind to understanding the world isn't as man/woman as we often think of it.