„When did you realise that you were trans?“ is a question that I personally haven’t been asked very often, but it’s one that the media likes to throw around every now and then. On the one hand, I can understand the curiosity of cis-people, on the other hand, I have always had to sigh when it has been asked. Because when, how and where gender happened for me is not a simple black and white question. I could neither give an exact age nor a rough time period. Which again is my main problem with this question, it’s not the curiosity of people, it’s the feeling of having to justify myself for things that are about as tangible as morning fog. There’s never been a moment in my life when my egg cracked… Maybe it’s always been broken, but who knows? I have no comparison. Which still bothers me to this day.
My early years in particular were characterised by eye-rolling. In retrospect, this period was when the Pride-wave was just rearing its head over Germany, but had not yet been broken to redeem the cityscape from its intrinsic black, white and grey. There weren’t many sources, but at least there were a few, and in them I keep running into the same phrase that still makes me roll my eyes as much today as it did then and ask „Well, when did you notice?“. It is the sentence, „I was always like this, I just didn’t have the words to describe it“.
Of course, the sentence is not really the problem, nor are the people who feel very addressed by this sentence… My problem is mainly that, firstly, it doesn’t really apply to me and, secondly, it ascribes to me complete responsibility over my own thoughts and actions. A kind, sympathetic, helping hand that knows the magic direction for you, that suddenly makes everything better as soon as I take it? Big no-go, instead never-ending doubts… doubts of doing the wrong thing.
As soon as one part of my brain thinks „Hey, I am trans“ the other part thinks „How can you be so sure? Maybe „being trans“ is just a pretend explanation that in retrospect explains all your childhood idiosyncrasies… but isn’t really the answer to your idiosyncrasies. To interpret things retrospectively along a „theory“ offers too many possibilities for an undifferentiated analysis. Maybe my liberal upbringing is responsible for me identifying more with more masculine roles? Maybe it’s my twelve years of martial arts? Childhood traumas? Internalised misogyny? Fear of growing up?
It’s true, when one of my lecturers actually managed to address me consistently without a salutation for a semester, I felt much more comfortable, but it didn’t change the fact that I wanted to look more masculine. Furthermore, I can say, yes I like biscuits in the shape of dinos, I have a soft spot for stickers, glow lights and washable tattoos, but does that automatically mean a refusal to grow up? If being an adult means that I have to give up things I enjoy just to be considered „mature“, then I would definitely refuse.
The longer I think about it, I notice how I keep coming back to one point: subjectivity. Or also, if you’ve met one trans person, you’ve met exactly one trans person, not all of them.
„I was always like this, I just didn’t have the words to describe it“, provides no basis for objective parameters. Yes, medicine has created objective factors and now finds that many of them were and continue to be redundant. So maybe objectivity is exactly what trans people (actually no: people) need. It doesn’t make it any easier, either in terms of one’s desires in the present or in terms of one’s future.
Did I suffer as a teenager? Yes, and quite a lot. Did it have something to do with my gender? No, it had more to do with a lack of belonging to a group and physical discomfort. Breasts too big and hips too wide, but I was far from the only one. Penis envy? No, and there was no other form of envy towards boys, precisely because they were boys. But I was still unhappy, mainly because I wanted to be me and something wasn’t right. Nevertheless, I never questioned my gender on my own, it had to be verbally beaten into my head with a sledgehammer before I decided to do so.
That is another point that bothers me, I am afraid of losing time and at the same time I have the feeling that I have made the wrong decision. But what is right or wrong? Is it right to decide not to transition in the hope that I will get used to my own discomfort over the course of my life and be able to dismiss it with a „other women don’t relate to their bodies either“? Or „other women don’t relate to their social roles or gender either“? Do I want to accept that I could spend my entire life feeling that something is missing… Or is it right to decide to transition because I’ve been thinking about almost nothing else for two years anyway and it’s working like a meat grinder inside me… At least I would then know where I stand and have tried it out.
Looks like I’ve answered a question for myself.