Is Trans A Real Thing?
because I get asked occasionally....
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I get a ton of email, and can rarely answer all of it.
A question I’ve been asked a few times in email came up indirectly with friends earlier today.
That question: “Is trans even a real thing?”
Here’s my answer.
As with most things, it depends on your definition. Gender dysphoria is very much a real thing, but we’re repeatedly told that the assertion that “gender dysphoria is required to be trans” is bigoted and discriminatory. “Transmedicalist” and “truscum” are the terms of art for that belief. (This will surprise some of you, but yes, the idea that gender dysphoria is required to be trans is highly controversial and considered bigoted. Google ‘truscum’ or ‘transmedicalist’ for more on this.)
In my mandatory diversity classes in university, we were taught that “trans” is an umbrella term that includes many people who don’t call themselves trans, including people who are “gender non-conforming.” (The picture above is the exact graphic from my class, I believe—the purple stands out in my memory.)
As a woman who only wears makeup for very special, highly-likely-to-be-photographed occasions; owns zero dresses or skirts; decorates her apartment with portraits of Star Trek captains; and is presently more excited about a coding project than anything else in her life — this definition makes me trans.
Which is obvious nonsense. I have no wish to change my secondary sex characteristics at all. I only ever experience even mild annoyance at having a female body when I jog, in the warm months, as the need for a sports bra is annoying.
Besides, “gender non-conforming” isn’t even a coherent concept. Nobody fits every sex stereotype and therefore everyone is gender non-conforming to some extent.
Everything I’ve said about myself here is true, but other things are true, too, such as: I cry a lot, am terrified of snakes, keep a clean house as a point of personal pride, remember everyone’s birthday, send people I love carefully chosen greeting cards through the actual postal service, and am otherwise stereotypically “girly” in many ways, too.
Likewise, there is no coherent definition of “trans,” even among the activists.
So is there such a thing as “being trans” that I would accept as a real condition that people suffer from, something that is not caused by social contagion—something that some people would experience even if social media were not a thing?