Are transgender people just pretending?

Cover Image created by Max Kuzma

Something that a lot of unaffirming Christians often get wrong about transgender people is the idea that we are pretending to be our gender. This is partly where the “we can always tell” trope comes from: as with any conspiracy theory, much of the thrill of believing in the conspiracy is the idea that you personally possess a deeper truth than other people do. Come to think of it, there’s some interesting overlap there with fundamentalism...

But let’s go back to this idea of pretending to be your gender. Now, how does that work out, exactly? How much of a long con is it to spend all that time, energy, effort, and money wading through the american healthcare system, (such that it is), to get multiple types of doctors to examine you and sign off on hormone replacement therapy and other possible procedures?

Oh wait, what’s that? You’ve switched to a new argument? Now you’re telling me that the young men and women of our country are being forced into this? That big phrama is in on it along with the nation’s healthcare professionals in order to… what exactly? Make a ton of money on the 5% of the population that doesn’t even have any spending power yet? Oh right I forgot that it’s the mainstream media brainwashing parents into thinking they should be forced into loving and supporting their children even when they’re not cis-het. 

Back to pretending. That is a lot of contradictory arguments to validate if you really want to ride the trans panic train. But the funny thing is, trans people do know a lot about pretending—just not the way you think. 

Imagine growing up always knowing that you’re really a little girl and having to pretend to be a boy at every second and in every way or face punishments ranging from verbal to possibly even physical. Wanting to have long hair but always being forced to have it cut. Wanting to play with certain toys and always having them taken away from you. Learning to pretend to be a boy just enough so that they don’t hurt you more—they just despise you. 

That’s what it feels like to force yourself into a box that you never asked for and never wanted. And for the vast majority of transgender people, there is no warm and supportive family who are instantly capable of understanding and helping with their transition. Most of the time, the data shows the opposite. Families choose to turn away their transgender children because they can’t accept the reality of the real person when their children stop pretending. 

I also lost a lot of catholic friends and acquaintances when I transitioned. Quite literally “poof,” they vanished, right out of my life. And if they did stick around, on a friends list somewhere on social media, it certainly wasn’t to talk to me or actually be my friend — it was for validating their  own sense of superiority and belief that I was doing the wrong thing. 

The truth is, I know I can’t change their minds. I know they might even read this blog, and come up with a million nonsensical and off topic rebuttals to some of the minutiae here while being incapable of refuting the actual content or the point.

In the end, some of the people who are voyeuristically reading these words genuinely do not care what becomes of me, whether I am happy or not. Some of these people would prefer that I not deviate from the story they’ve been telling themselves about me. Some of these people would rather I stick to pretending. 

I am done pretending. I will be myself fully, unabashedly, and I will share the joy and happiness I find in my transformation because even though I have been rejected more times than I can count by people I thought would always be in my corner, I can say with certainty that I know something none of them really do: myself.

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