Trans People Need to Stick Together
Stop Gatekeeping and Infighting
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With everything that transgender people have going against us, you would think we’d be more unified so we could stand together against all the hate and transphobia in the world. Sadly, that doesn’t seem to be the case, and I find this very disappointing.
I still can’t believe that some transgender people think that other transgender people are not trans enough, just because they don’t have crippling levels of dysphoria or they don’t plan to medically transition. Some even outright reject non-binary and other people who fall under the genderqueer umbrella.
I’m not here to point fingers or name names, but I’ve come across so many videos online where a transgender person is outright attacking another. Sometimes it’s because the person identifies themselves as a transgender person, but their gender expression isn’t masculine or feminine enough. The idea that non-binary or genderfluid people can’t be trans because they don’t neatly fall into the gender binary doesn’t make them any less transgender.
Not every transgender person comes to understand they are trans in the same way. For some, they’ve known since they were very young. Others may not have recognized it within themselves until later in life. This can depend on which generation we are a part of or the culture we were raised in. This means that for some of us, we may have lived as our assigned birth gender most of our adult lives. Our journey to recognize we are transgender may not all look the same.
In my case, while I clearly remember stating I was a boy when I was very young, I adopted the identity of tomboy because being transgender was not a widely known concept back in the 1970s and 80s. My dysphoria was very mild, and I just focused on living my life since there wasn’t anything I could do to change the body I was born with. Even after Chaz Bono came out, the transgender identity didn’t immediately click with me.
It took a very long time for me to recognize that I was trans. Once the possibility crossed my mind, I spent a lot of time researching. I read…
