A plea to my fellow trans people

We need to find a better path forward

Photo by Adrien Tutin on Unsplash

Living as a trans person in 2025 feels a lot different than when I first came out as trans in the early 2000s. We didn’t realize how good we had it. We were rare enough that not everyone knew what trans meant, but not so rare that most people had someone in their community who identified as trans.

Maybe it’s the algorithm, but I can’t go online without encountering some content related to trans identities - whether it’s Elon Musk tweeting about cancelling Netflix for promoting trans propaganda, or reading in the news about some new drama related to JK Rowling and her alleged transphobia.

For the most part, I try to keep my nose down, be a good worker, family member and citizen. But as a disaffected trans person who has decided to stay transitioned as the least damaging course of action for the people I love and work with, I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t wear on me.

In online trans circles the fear is real: US-based trans people asking for help on how to leave the country, posters expressing fear about their passports having their natal sex markers on them upon renewal despite years of living in a cross-gender identity, stories of being let go from jobs for dubious reasons.

The honeymoon period of trans acceptance is well and truly over — particularly in the US.

Part of me can’t help feeling that we as a community have brought some of this on ourselves, by refusing to talk with people who hold different beliefs from our own (the ‘no debate’ policy so common among trans activist circles), and by insisting that anyone who might have questions about the recent proliferation of gender identities is a transphobe. As a community, we demanded empathy and understanding from those around us, and yet we offered little of that back. We chose protest over persuasion.

Let’s face it, the trans community isn’t really much of a community. We are a mishmash of different groups with very different agendas, thrown together under the label of trans but with often very little in common. What does a middle-aged man with a successful career and children who decides to transition late in life have in common with a young girl who struggles to fit in, and is just about to enter puberty? Very little, I’d say. And yet both fall under the label of trans as if they have a shared experience.

So much of the turmoil around how trans people should be treated revolves around labels, language and definitions. Where the label trans used to refer to people with cross-gender identification who wanted to live in the other gender, it now includes people who self-interpret as genderfluid, agender, bigender, nonbinary, or gender nonconforming. This expansion of what trans means has complicated the work of healthcare providers who often are oblivious to the nuances of the gender world and in that ignorance are attempting to discern who will benefit from medical interventions that are a one-way trip to irreversible bodily changes. And while they try to sort through the complexities, the numbers of young people seeking care keeps on climbing. It’s a recipe for chaos.

Because the healthcare system has had such a fraught history of pathologizing gender nonconformity, by including for example homosexuality as a mental disorder in the DSM up until the 1970s, and because of the way AIDS patients were treated, often shrouded in secrecy and shame during the 1980s, one can hardly blame those of us who are gender nonconforming for having a paranoid bent; our history demands it. AIDS likely would not have received the attention (and research funding) it needed, if community activists had not spoken out loudly, protested, and demanded better from doctors, researchers, and government officials. Polite people struggle to have their voices heard, but scream loud enough and you’ll get attention.

That anti-authority streak within lesbian and gay activism carried over into trans activism. It’s understandable. But in the process of screaming and demanding our ‘rights’, we have trampled over people who matter just as much as we do, and people who are not being served by the things we are demanding. Here I am thinking of the gender-distressed young people who don’t necessarily ‘know who they are’. I’m thinking of the young person who was sexually assaulted and is trying to heal. I’m thinking of a teenager with autistic traits and fears of being alone who is desperately seeking a place to belong. I’m thinking of the anxious and depressed young adult who has been told all her life that she is ugly, worthless and stupid. I’m thinking of the young man who is in a toxic relationship with a person who tells him he’ll never be a man and as a result begins to believe he would be better off as a woman.

By demanding that hormones and surgery be handed out to anyone who asks, the most extreme voices in trans activism are causing actual suffering to people who deserve better care than that. By refusing to acknowledge the pain and suffering of those who are speaking up and saying that they have experienced harm, these extreme voices are showing a lack of empathy and understanding while continuing to demand that from others. It’s a losing strategy.

The way I think about this is as follows: if I received a medical treatment that benefited me, and then I later learned that others who received the exact same treatment than me had devastating outcomes, I would accept that some guardrails needed be put in place to prevent future harm, even if it disadvantaged people like me who could benefit from that treatment. Because I’m not the only person who matters.

I have yet to see any of the medical organizations that promote informed consent models of gender affirming care speak up publicly that perhaps safeguarding is called for to protect those who mistakenly seek comfort in a trans identity for an otherwise inarticulable suffering. Until that happens, my plea is to other trans people like me who care about everyone, not just trans people.

We need a better path forward that takes into consideration everyone’s needs.