There was a thread I saw recently, that really struck me as a growing trend I have been seeing online. It has been bothering me and I felt the need to write my thoughts about it. The post in question is about a trans woman joking about being in denial and having tea parties because they are awesome.
Whenever cis people see trans people discussing signs of their gender identity online, they immediately feel the need to jump in and discount the signs in a number of ways. Whether it’s because they did the same things but are still cis or that trans people shouldn’t “police” gender roles, or that kids should be allowed to do what they want without assigning identities to them. Many of them seem like they feel their own cis gender identity is being attacked.
In the beginning of my gender journey™, I clung to signs from my past as a way to justify to society and myself that I am in fact trans and valid, because the truth is, I was extremely insecure about my identity. I grew up during a time that said trans people don’t exist, and the ones that do are to be shunned, and there was only a very narrow way to be trans.
Despite it being completely and utterly wrong, the phrase, FEELINGS AREN’T FACTS are a part of the cultural zeitgeist, and it infects the way people think, including myself. So much of being trans is based on feeling and when you’ve been shoving feelings down and ignoring them your entire life, it can be impossible to hear them. So, for people in similar situations, signs are all they have and they were all I had for a time.
After becoming secure in my gender identity, I truly don’t believe you need signs to be trans. The official diagnosis doesn’t even include signs among its criteria. I actually think it does a pretty good job aside from the clinically significant distress/impairment part. I would be hard-pressed to be convinced that someone isn’t trans if they meet the criteria, but aren’t distressed/impaired by it.
However, I do not think a cis boy enjoying a tea party because it’s awesome and a trans girl enjoying a tea party because it is affirming are two competing ideas and can easily coexist in the same space. You don’t need to have enjoyed tea parties to be trans, but if it was a way for you to feel gender affirmation then it is absolutely a sign. The same goes for any other common trope or sign that trans people use.
This could easily be transphobes being disingenuous and trolling, as they are relentless online, but I still wanted to express my feelings on the matter. My wish is for online spaces to become more empathetic to each other’s experiences (fat chance I know) and to stop competing on what makes someone’s gender identity in threads like these. There is room for everyone’s experience of tea parties and they are all just as valid.
Doc Impossible made a wonderfully written article that is more coherent than I will ever be about signs and gender identity last year that I highly recommend for more reading on the topic.
There’s nothing wrong with anyone’s self conception of their gender. Gender isn’t confined by parameters and criteria, and it isn’t subject to outside analysis. If a man felt that wearing dresses made him feel masculine, there is no valid argument to the contrary. Masculinity and femininity are relative terms just like man and woman are. It doesn’t matter what someone on the outside thinks. It should be socially unacceptable to question that aspect of someone.
Gender and gender experience is unique to every person. It’s who we are, and it’s whatever we feel that it is. There’s nothing wrong with being a feminine cis guy, or a masculine trans woman, or someone who rejects those labels altogether and identifies as agender. It’s so frustrating hearing transphobes argue that we, through trans rights and liberation, are enforcing gender roles. When that is quite literally the exact opposite of what we’re doing.
I know I’m preaching to the choir, but yeah, this subject brings up a lot of feelings for me. The whole notion of trans liberation being “new gender roles” comes up a lot from transmedicalists too, who in some attempt to acquire the sympathy of cisgender transphobes will sometimes “agree” that cis kids are being forced to transition by overzealous doctors reassigning gender roles based on conventional masculinity/femininity.