tightbottomgame asked: I have no idea about why/whether '-folk' is becoming a thing now, but I wonder if its derived in part from 'leatherfolk', which is an (ostensibly) gender-neutral and to a lesser extent sexuality-neutral term for BDSM communities that has been in use several decades (earliest example a quick google turned up was 1984).
that’s interesting. obviously there’s no automatic link between kink and transness, but it’s possibly one factor in the increased use of “folk” to describe things to do with gender and sexuality. (& “leatherpeople” does sound frickin weird.) on the other hand, when you google “leatherfolk + trans” most of the usages of trans are not in the context of the phrase “trans folk”. I’m just really baffled by how and why this became a thing! linguists and historians, get on it
