internalized transphobia: do you experience it? what do you do about it?

I used to swim in internalized transphobia. It helped that I went through the process of challenging my internalised French-Canadian-living-in-English-Canada phobia and biphobia, these provided models of how much healthier it was to not hate myself over part of myself. I knew it was possible to change my take on things about a part of me so entrenched in feelings of self-loath.

Part of it was unpacking why I wished I was cis , how much of it was based on assumptions that weren’t based in reality. e.g. wishing I was cis so I’d have grown taller. I’m the tallest in my family. There’s no reason to believe I’d have grown taller if I was cis. I’d still have my parents’ of origin genes.

Eventually, I learnt about osteoarcheology, and forensics medicine. Through that I learnt that according to osteology, which is a lot of statistics rather than absolute truth, my skeleton reads as intersex, which I am. What gender I’d be assigned by an archaeologist or forensic doc would depend on which bone they found. If they found multiples or the whole thing, the measures would come back inconclusive. Odds are, if I was cis and endo (not intersex) I’d be (close to) the same height, but bones proportioned a little differently, had I only undergone one puberty. But so what? I’d still be short for a guy, who still grew up thinking no less of my dads or granddads for being shorter. I’d still swap shoes with people 6 feet tall and my slightly shorter than me dad of origin.

I wished I was cis to have wider shoulders, wrists and feet. But I’ve met quite a few cis men in and around my height with shoulders, feet and wrists my size. I’m picking on my body size, but there are other examples.

I went to therapy for a long time, not mostly over that, but it lent itself to unpacking it along the way.

[Piture by Thomas Griesbeck on Unsplash. Description: guy with hand in front of his face in focus.]

Cis people who inform me they don’t date trans people, especially when it’s unprompted (e.g. I wasn’t flirting with them) are assured the feeling’s mutual: I don’t date transphobes. It’s less common nowadays because outside the UK, I don’t typically disclose to dates. But the last person I flirted with who knew me prior to transition ended things upon concluding she couldn’t take me home as a date to her mum because of my transness. I know her mum, she adores me, and I presume she knows my medical history but perhaps she’s not been told. At any rate, such people never know how to receive the news that loss of interest can be truly mutual. But since shedding my internalised transphobia, it really is mutual disinterest. It’d be toxic to date someone who wishes I was cis; I want healthy relationships.

I stopped considering transphobia as potentially justified cisnormativity and now recognize it for the gaslighting it is . They don’t know me better than me. They don’t know the science better than my prescribers and me. I don’t have to educate anyone; I don’t care if they accept that the disinterest in dating, for example, is mutual. I care that I know that.

My resilience is grounded in knowing being cis would probably not bring on the changes I’ve previously wished it would. I know the counter arguments to cisnormativity and transphobia inside and out. I’ve repeated them to myself so many times that I believe them beyond the shadow of a doubt. I also know the harmful spiral brought on by buying into the gaslighting and self-loathing. I have kick ass chosen family and friends who share my values, and our mutual support is rock solid. I have resilience tools, and prior experience on which to refuel my self-confidence.

I refute transmedicalist rhetoric that starts from the premise that trans people must suffer to be trans, and that trans people aren’t trans anymore if they aren’t dysphoric, or that none of us who had dysphoria were able to find ways to resolve or manage it .

I also reject the “radikewl” notion that I should use my body to make a statement about the binary, or otherwise be visible. If someone wants to do that with their body, more power to them. I’m pro-choice in the broadest sense. And, my body, my choice; my life, my narrative, so long as I don’t harm others without their freely given, enthusiastic, ongoing consent.

My resilience around community based transphobia , starts with the understanding that we’re all human, flaws and all. Trans people are not necessarily “safer” people to be around. Some of my cis friends have been rock solid supportive when most trans men were throwing stigma at my lower surgery dreams and post-op genitals . It’s not because I share medical history with someone that we have to share an understanding of why we did what we did (or didn’t do.)

[Picture by Mauro Mora on Unplash. Description: a crowd in motion at an intersection.]

I have lots of friends who say they don’t consider themselves trans anymore. That’s cool. We don’t tend to share a definition of trans, so really I don’t believe they’re rejecting me. Nor do I think they’ve necessarily internalised transphobia. Simultaneously, I’m not wedded to the choice of words I make use of for myself. I look back at my former use of other words (e.g. ftm) , cringe, and trust that if I come across or create better wording that feels better, I’ll change my rhetoric again.

But my emigration’s ongoing impact on my access to T, insurance to cover penile implant replacement (when the time comes), ongoing emerging family plans, etc don’t allow me to claim I don’t think about trans stuff as it relates to me. I used to believe that ongoing self-awareness of my medical history was some sort of “short coming” to my transition . But for me, that was internalised transphobia. There’s nothing wrong with remaining self-aware.

It doesn’t frame my relationship to disclosure , I consider my relationship to my medical history deeply intimate and personal. My ongoing decisions about if/when to disclose are made independent of my self-awareness . I endeavour to not gaslight myself: I think of my trans stuff, and that’s ok. I don’t feel better (understood) if I disclose or don’t. So I weave my life in a medley of seeming contradictions, selectively disclosing, and building in a lot of alone time, and self-care. That’s how I feel best and best manage my relationship to my transness.