What Does It Mean to Be Trans?
We’ve already gone over different LGBT+ terms in the Glossary, so now it’s time to dig deeper into what it actually means to be transgender.
Right away, being transgender is not a mental illness. It is not something that you can get rid of. You can’t take medication to not be trans, compared to taking medication for something like Depression and then having that Depression get better.
You can, however, be trans and have mental illnesses. But having a mental illness cannot cause someone to be trans. The dysphoria, or distress from your body not matching your brain, can make any mental illnesses worse, such as anxiety, but dysphoria itself is not a mental illness.
Personally, I would define being trans as a medical condition. Although, everyone else’s definitions might be slightly different.
To me, it’s a medical condition for which treatment involves hormone replacement therapy, surgery, and things like changing my name and using different pronouns or wearing more masculine clothes.
Transitions do not have to be medical, and are not the same for everyone, but this is what I have felt is right for me so that my body looks the way I feel most comfortable with.
And nobody knows your body better than you.
The Dangers Of Trying To Stop Someone From Being Trans
Trying to stop a trans person from being who they are is the same as making a gay person go through conversion therapy – it doesn’t work. It’s dangerous, and can often lead to suicide or self-harm.
Conversion therapy is a way of denying somebody their true self by trying to make them think that their identity is ‘wrong’ or ‘sinful’ in some way, and is one of the most harmful things a person can be made to go through. Tactics within conversation therapy include making someone have negative associations with a part of their identity, or trying to convince them that they are confused or misguided.
It’s illegal in a lot of places, but that doesn’t erase the damage it has already done to LGBT+ people over the last few decades.
I understand being concerned for a friend or loved one if you’re nervous about what being trans might mean for how they could be treated by other people. But trying really, really hard to check that they’re ‘making the right decision’ over and over again is exhausting for the trans person.
It’s okay to want the best for the people that you care about, but if you’re worried about them because of how the world might react, then what’s the real problem here?
It’s not them, obviously.
It’s the fact that there isn’t the right information out there about trans people. There are so many news articles about how ‘dangerous’ we are, how ‘the children’ are being brainwashed or forced to be trans. About detransitioners.
Trans people are not dangerous. In fact, most of us just want to be left alone to live our lives without the wrong stuff being written online and in the newspapers.
What a lot of us really want you to understand, is that nobody is being made to do anything, and the decision to transition is one that is often made with years of fear and thought behind it. The decision, by the way, is not in being trans, but in telling other people about it.
It is not made overnight, and it is not easy knowing that you might lose your family, your friends, your life, because you finally figured out who you really are.
How Do People Actually End Up Being Trans?
I’ll reiterate the definition from the Glossary again here: Someone who is transgender has a gender identity that is different from their assigned sex at birth. This will often involve feelings of gender dysphoria, and then euphoria once the process of transitioning begins.
But how does someone end up identifying as trans?
One of the most researched explanations is biological.
There might also be social factors involved, as society has created various gender roles for men and women to fit into which can sometimes be too restrictive, although gender roles themselves are separate from gender identity.
Gender roles include women being expected to be feminine or wear certain types of clothing and makeup, and men being expected to play football or be interested in more masculine hobbies.
Knowing these roles, you might find that the one assigned to you because of your sex at birth, just doesn’t feel quite right. By figuring out that the way you have been expected to act does not align with the way you feel on the inside, you may realize that you have been experiencing gender dysphoria.
Gender expression, the way you look on the outside, is often heavily influenced by gender roles. Women can present with a more masculine expression and still identify as female, such as tomboys, and men can do things like wear makeup and still identify as male.
The difference is in gender identity, the way you feel on the inside. For example, what pronouns are you most comfortable with when people refer to you? When you look at your body, does it line up with what you feel should be there?
If you feel anxious or distressed in the difference between your identity and your body, that can be a sign of gender dysphoria, which is another way of saying you could be transgender.
There’s also the argument of nature vs nurture, which is essentially biology vs society, as explained above.
Biological Factors
Research suggests that the brains of trans people are actually a lot closer to the gender we identify as in terms of structure, than the sex we were born as. Trans men might have a more male brain structure, for example.
During development inside the womb, the body and the brain of a baby develop separately. Therefore, the body might develop female sex characteristics, but the brain may develop in a typically male pattern.
Or it may develop somewhere in between, but this is a very individual process based on various circumstances, which are not yet fully understood.
Brain functionality also shows similar trends, with the brain of a trans person showing similar functionality to that of a cis person who identifies as the same gender.
Of course, there are dangers in trying to present a biological component to being trans. There might be people who want to use that against us, by trying to find a more specific cause of being trans, and prevent that from happening during development.
Which would be… not great.
Regardless, what the biology does show, is that being trans is not a choice.
It is a natural part of the world, and there is no stopping it. The right thing to do is to be supportive of people who are trans and help us do what we need to do, like making access to hormones and professional support easier, so that we can live as comfortably as possible as our authentic selves.
Being trans is influenced by both biology, and society. Biology because of how hormones in the body and physical sex characteristics develop separately to the physiology of the brain during development in the womb.
Society because, once you come out of the womb, societal expectations and gender roles influence and allow you to figure out how you see yourself vs how the world sees you, and if there is a difference between the two, what you can do about it.
In Conclusion
What causes someone to identify as transgender is not necessarily easily explained. But the explanations we do have point towards gender identity not being a choice, and also as something that should be respected.
If someone is struggling with their gender identity, they should be able to feel safe and listened to, and they should know that there is absolutely nothing wrong with the way that they are feeling.
These feelings should be able to be explored in a calm and loving environment, or with a professional, such as a gender specialist from a gender identity clinic.
Gender can be incredibly fluid, and can change even after you’ve figured out that you identify a certain way. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
