When I was a kid, I struggled with understanding my place in the world. Anxious by disposition, I also had to contend with an ever changing cultural environment as my family moved from one continent to another. One can say that a culture comes with inbuilt scripts for its members, norms of what to expect or do. The gender script especially caused me great stress growing up. I just didn’t seem to know how girls were supposed to behave from one culture to the next. Later, the script for how I was supposed to experience my sexuality also felt like a bad fit. Was I gay, was I straight? What I was, most of the time, was a misfit.
A popular narrative online of late is that gender affirming care is a new kind of conversion therapy — one that is converting gay people into trans people. Aside from it being a catchy catch-phrase, ‘stop transing the gay away’ captures a popular belief that most kids who experience some form of gender incongruence, if they were left alone, would simply grow up to be gay. This is at least somewhat borne out by research, though the research is not without controversy.
However, as psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett likes to say when she talks about emotions and body budgets: all metaphors are wrong, but some are useful. I think the catch-phrase of ‘transing the gay away’ is a sometimes useful one but it feels incomplete.
Having spoken to and read the stories of a number of detransitioners, one story that has emerged from their voices is of the butch lesbian or effeminate gay man who for whatever reason developed a belief that they were trans and then later realized that they were gay not trans (here’s a recent example of just such a tale).
In a recent commentary “Affirming Everyone in the Rainbow: Is Gender-Affirming Healthcare “Gay Conversion Therapy?”, the authors (Kinnon R MacKinnon, Pablo Expósito-Campos, David J Kinitz, and Joey Bonifacio) take a closer look at this narrative and come to the conclusion that it is unconvincing. They argue that ‘transing the gay away’ can only be true if we assume that sexual orientation is innate and unchangeable while gender identity is not. They argue that because we have evidence that sexual orientation can shift over time for some, it is no more innate than gender identity is.
It’s an interesting argument but misses the point I think. The opposition that some feel towards how quickly young people are nudged in the direction of a trans identity is not that there is something inherently wrong with being trans, but that a trans identity comes with potentially serious medical ramifications for that individual. If a child could integrate their gender incongruence into a gay identity without needing serious medical interventions, surely that is a preferable outcome.
The authors also argue that gender nonconformity isn’t always a precursor to a trans identity, and that the majority of trans people see themselves as a sexual minority post transition, undermining the claim that people are becoming trans due to homophobia. To me this argument does not particularly debunk the claim that gay youth are being transitioned, only that they are not the only youth being transitioned. As for the claim that young people are more likely to identify as a sexual minority following transition, what this could indicate is that youth are fleeing heteronormativity, regardless of sexual orientation.
This tracks with my own experience. Prior to becoming trans, I had struggled for years to fit in to a heteronormative culture. The societal waters I swam were very much discouraging of a gay identity. I knew no one growing up who was a lesbian — except for rumours about the conductor of a youth orchestra I was part of. But she was also vilified for being a ‘homewrecker’ (she slept with a married woman) and treated with suspicion by my disapproving mother. I did interact with some suspected gay men growing up, but again their sexuality was spoken about in hushed tones and shrouded in secrecy and ridicule. As HIV ravaged gay men’s lives in the 80s and 90s, the message I grew up with was that their life choices were the cause of the disease’s spread. AIDS was God’s punishment for immoral acts.
No surprise, then, that I did not exactly gravitate toward a gay identity even as I was trying to make sense of my same-sex attractions. Besides, I also experienced opposite-sex attractions so maybe I wasn’t gay after all, I told myself.
When I was finally diagnosed with gender identity disorder (now called gender dysphoria), the relief I felt was deep. Finally I could point to my newfound diagnosis as the source of my social discomfort; I didn’t fit in because I was actually wired differently. The diagnosis made it official. Had I been given an autism diagnosis, I imagine the relief would have been the same — though practically speaking, the outcome would have been very different.
Once I started to transition, I experienced a rush of excitement because to my mind my diagnosis had given me permission to imagine a life that wasn’t defined by the rigid expectations of a culture I didn’t fit into very well. I gave myself permission to ‘break the rules’ because I now felt I was allowed to. I wasn’t just a bad fit as a woman, I was trans and therefore I didn’t have to be a woman at all.
At the time, it made sense. Looking back, I cringe. I was so desperate to have an explanation for why I felt so awkward socially and in my own body. Up to then I had felt like a failed human. The trans identity offered me an off ramp, or an on ramp to a new way of life. I no longer was beholden to society’s rules; I could create my own. It was the ultimate act of personal agency.
Or so it felt at first.
Of course, I had escaped one box only to get trapped in another. I had escaped the box of woman, with all its accompanying accoutrements (makeup, dresses, sexual harassment, etc.) only to find myself in the box of man with all its baggage (men are scary, men are homophobic, men are misogynistic, men are violent). I didn’t want to be in that box either.
I was like an entertainer who turned down a script because I wanted to be the scriptwriter, not an actor in someone else’s play. Only, when I put down the woman script, I was handed the man script and it sucked too. I needed a different genre entirely. And a different medium.
While prior to transitioning I had flirted with being a lesbian, it had not felt terribly comfortable as an identity for me. I don’t really understand why. Perhaps it was my early conditioning or the lack of strong role models. Perhaps it was because I ultimately wasn’t interested in femininity and what it represented to me (right or wrong). Perhaps if I had been invited to participate in a butch sub-culture, I would have found my place in it. I never did. In any case, I didn’t want to be a pretend man. I either wanted to be the real thing or nothing at all. My thinking was not particularly subtle or refined. I was desperate, and I was hurting.
As I had opposite sex attractions as well as same sex ones, I became interested in exploring the dating world of gay men. My trans identity afforded me a freedom to move beyond the heteronormative. I was a gender outlaw. No longer did I need to follow anyone’s script but my own. If I wanted to date gay men, and they wanted to date me, then why not?
Of course, looking back I now realize that I was still in someone else’s script, I just wasn’t aware of it. I had stumbled into the world of Queer, which is all about blurring boundaries, obfuscating difference and deconstructing categories for political purposes. I was a pawn in someone else’s army and I didn’t even know it. I think that’s true for lots of people who are drawn into the cultural movement that is trans.
That brings us back to MacKinnon et al’s article. We are not just transing the gay away. We are seeing an exodus out of straight culture. Particularly for those of us who struggle socially (those who are on the autism spectrum, for example), a trans identity is a way to say: screw your norms. It’s a way to carve out space to be different. Some choose to stay gender outlaws (e.g. nonbinary trans). While others re-integrate into familiar gender scripts that previously had been forbidden to them (e.g. binary trans).
And that would be fine, if it weren’t also coupled with a lie… A lie that claims that people can change sex, that gender identity is a transcendent soul-being inside of us. It’s a lie that is enabled by medical providers who mistake themselves for saviours doing god’s work by carving up physically healthy bodies on the altar of trans healthcare. This isn’t healthcare. It is a social movement using the tools of medicine to its own ends.
If we want to put an end to this madness we need to have a discussion on a societal level of how to integrate the misfits in a way that strengthens society rather than weakens it. As a misfit, I want to be a contributor to society. I am willing to give voice to someone else’s script if it’s a good one. But right now, we need better writers.
Don't you think we were on our way to that end before gender ideology bulldozered all of us? I think here in Australia we were really on board with supporting people to tap into their diversity socially and in the workplace. There was a lot of funding available to individuals and businesses who employed them. Gender Ideology has set us back at least 30 years. At least.
To whom you are attracted sexually is purely subjective and therefore cannot reasonably be contested by an outside observer.
Where you decide to live your life on a spectrum of superficial, stereotypical male to female attributes (and we all do) is also purely subjective and similarly cannot be questioned.
However, your biological sex reflects an objective reality which cannot be changed by your subjective personal view and futile attempts to do so can result in serious health impacts to you as well as harms to members of the sex you are impersonating (primarily women).
Others who are grounded in objective reality should never be forced to accept your subjective version of your actual biological sex.
Finally, it's past time for the LGB community to separate themselves from the trans activists who are trying to take away the rights of women to fairness in sports and to privacy and safety in their restrooms, locker rooms and prisons. They also advocate for the chemical and surgical mutilation of children many of whom would grow up gay.
Their actions are evil and the
understandable negative reaction to the harm they are causing is spilling over to innocent people who are just going about their business, marrying and leading their lives.
XXX