FAQ
What is it like to be transgender?
Here is a really good twitter thread on that question that uses the metaphor of being left handed.
What changed in your life leading up to you deciding to be trans?
Here’s the thing. I didn’t decide to be trans, I decided to come out... to share that information with other people, and to take steps to transition (to align my physical body and social role with the person I’ve always been inside). People on the queer spectrum (gay, lesbian, trans, and more) are just as capable of self-knowledge as anyone else. We don’t “decide” to be queer. We know who we are, and then we have to find the courage to live out our identities.
Why can’t you just be gender non-conforming?
Gender is not a performance. My transition isn’t about what clothes I wear or a hairstyle I have (fun fact, I lived a cosmetic gender-non-conforming life for ten years—from high school until 2019—dressing in masculine clothes and having short hair, and it didn’t alleviate my dysphoria because gender presentation is not the same thing as your identity). A person’s gender identity is fixed and deserves respect, no matter how it is expressed or presented.
Isn’t medical transition just self-harm and mutilation?
No. It would be self-harm and mutilation if a cis-gender person went through a medical transition. [The following info is from Wikipedia] There was actually a Canadian man, David Remer, who was “born male but reassigned female and raised as a girl following medical advice and intervention after his penis was severely injured during a botched circumcision in infancy. The psychologist John Money oversaw the case and reported the reassignment as successful and as evidence that gender identity is primarily learned. The academic sexologist Milton Diamond later reported that Reimer's realization that he was not a girl crystallized between the ages of 9 and 11 years and he transitioned to living as a male at age 15. Well known in medical circles for years anonymously as the "John/Joan" case, Reimer later went public with his story to help discourage similar medical practices. He committed suicide after suffering years of severe depression, financial instability, and a troubled marriage.” [end wikipedia quote] All because he was forced to live in a gender identity that was not his own.
What about the catholic belief in the resurrection of the body? What will your body look like in heaven post-transition?
Probably a lot like Jesus’s body, scars and all!
There’s a very interesting art project I saw based off the painting "The Incredulity of Saint Thomas" painted by Caravaggio in 1603. [The following description comes from this enfleshed facebook page]. “A Swedish photographer called Elisabeth Ohlson Wallin's did 2017 exhibit, "id:TRANS" and featured a photographer replacing the figure of Jesus with a transgender man after his surgery. The focus of attention is not on the scar of Jesus' crucifixion but on the post-top-surgery scars of a trans person. It should take nothing more than our own faithful proclamations for others to believe trans people - trans women, trans men, nonbinary trans people - are who we say we are. Blessed be art that inspires, invites, and expands. And "blessed are those who do not need to see to believe."“
Top image: photography by Elisabeth Ohlson Wallin, based on the painting below which is The Incredulity of Saint Thomas by Caravaggio.