Personally I think that gender is not binary or even quaternary. It is much more complex than that and always have been. I see it as a spectrum.
I think that has always been the case. But we have a conservative society that puts people in pigeonholes, and that society has a binary view of gender – male and female. Anyone who didn’t fit was queer and was very much undesirable and picked on. Their lives could be made hell.
The pressure on people who did not conform to the norm was severe.
I bet that most of those people suppressed their sexuality and lived unhappy lives.
Maybe today we are moving to a less judgemental era where people can be free to be who they really are? Thus it seems that more types of expressions of gender and sexuality are coming out of the woodwork.
I don’t see that as sinister. I welcome it.