Trans 101

Dear Readers,

So I’ve had my blog up for a little while now and I’ve had some great conversations with some of you. But inevitably the concept of being transgender is easily misunderstood, and I completely understand because it’s not an easy topic to wrap your head around. Here are a couple of common questions that I’ve run into:

So, does that mean you’re gay?

So, you are a drag queen?

Ok, ok, you just aren’t comfortable with masculine roles. Just avoid those and everything will be fine, right?

I think these are pretty common questions, and the problem stems from not having the vocabulary or experience to easily contextualize transgender issues. Issues of gender, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation aren't things that most people have to think about on a regular basis, so it’s easy to conflate them.

I think this whole discussion would be less complicated if I remembered to start by explaining the most basic concepts, so here is my best shot at re-explaining some of the basics in as straightforward a way as possible.

There are four spectrums that people generally use to inform their perception of a person’s gender, without even thinking about it, these are: gender identity, gender expression, sex, and sexual orientation. In fact, most people don’t think of them as spectrums, but rather as binary categories.

But rest assured, they are spectrums, and most people fall somewhere in the middle on almost all of them. I've found this diagram to be helpful in understanding this concept, and though it doesn't explain everything perfectly, it seems to work for me pretty well.

Now that you’ve looked at that, let me tell you where I fit on these.

1.)  Gender Identity.  On the first spectrum, I identify on the pink side of the scale. I feel female. People wonder why that is, and why I can’t just become comfortable with my maleness, but that’s a question I can’t answer, mostly because I don’t know why myself. I’ve tried to force myself into assuming a masculine identity and it just doesn’t work very well. In fact, an individual’s first response to gender dysphoria is often to attempt to retreat into the gender identity that society thinks they should be. That’s why there are constant stories about trans people who transition out of hyper-masculine or hyper-feminine roles and careers, because they’ve spent much of their lives trying to force themselves to match their self-perceived gender identity with their physical sex. It just tends not to be compatible long-term with a healthy mental state. Don’t get me wrong; I don’t think it’s bad being a man; it’s that vague feeling that ‘man-ness’ is amiss in my case every moment of every day that starts to get to me after a while.

2.) Gender Expression. On this spectrum, I’ll admit I’d rather be more towards the feminine end. I would love more opportunities to let my gender expression match my gender identity. Plus, I find traditionally male clothing to be kind of boring. Women have a lot more opportunity to express themselves through dress, and they also have better-looking clothes. I’m envious of this. However, I also understand that it makes a lot of people deeply, deeply uncomfortable to see a man wearing obviously feminine clothes. I’d rather be compassionate towards others and considerate of their feelings than perfectly true to my natural bent here. Clothes are, after all, mostly for the benefit of others—they denote our role and position in life to those that see us. I wear clothes to suit the male role I’ve chosen to fill for the moment, though I do tend towards androgynous clothing as much as possible. I find I don’t have to change my behavioral expression much though; it’s getting more and more accepted for guys to engage in things like cooking and knitting these days, so I pursue my interests fairly freely. My wife often loves this, as I love doing things like shopping and watching rom-coms, which are things a lot of women have trouble getting their husbands to do with them.

3.) Biological Sex. My biological sex is male, as anyone who knew me in diapers can attest. Obviously there is a conflict between my gender identity and my biological sex. My physical masculine characteristics feel wrong somehow, like I woke up in someone else’s body, but every day. It’s a really hard feeling to describe to others.

4.)  Sexual Orientation. This is the one that’s confusing, because many people define ‘gay’ as being attracted to people on the same end of one of these spectrums as yourself. I’m physically and romantically attracted to girls, but while most people, based on spectrums 2 and 3 for me, would say that I was straight because of this, most psychologists and trans people would prefer to use spectrum 1 and say that I’m a lesbian with the caveat that I’m in a male body. But it’s worth noting that sexual orientation differs in trans people just like it does among the cisgender (e.g., not transgender) populace.

With that rather lengthy explanation out of the way, let’s get some tl;dr takeaways:

Most of my struggle comes from the disconnect between my perceived gender identity and my biological sex. It’s a disconnect that I’d love to overcome forever and just be happy in my skin, but for the vast majority of people with gender dysphoria, that’s the impossible dream we all dream.

Gender, sex, and sexual orientation can be kind of complicated. So try and be open and be willing to listen if anyone ever wants to try and explain how they fit into some of these categories. It might be difficult to understand, but just trying to listen and trying to understand how a person understands themselves helps a lot.

Also, I like girls. In case you were wondering. J

Thanks for reading and being there for me, awesome readers. You all are the best.

Love,

Kyle.