Happy Pride, and welcome to our new summer series we just couldn’t be more excited to roll out for you: Trans Summer School! We’re here to talk about all things trans, all summer long.
Are you feeling uncomfortable in your body and with your relationship to gender? Boy howdy, did you ever come to the right place! Now, “uncomfortable” isn’t always easy to identify: it varies from person to person. For some people, it’s an intense, overwhelming feeling that might include alienation from their genitals, distress when forced to wear gendered clothing, and unhappiness around gendered pronouns that feel wrong. Sometimes it’s just uneasiness and a sense that something isn’t quite right. Or the discovery that something feels very right.
We’re going to be talking to sex educators, surgeons, and other experts—including lots of trans people, who have both professional and lived experience—over the course of the summer, and you may find something to identify with in their stories. This series is designed to give you news you can use about gender—and hopefully, to help you figure out where you fit in and feel best.
Over the course of this series, we’ll be exploring what it means to be transgender, what to do if you think your assigned sex and presumed gender don’t align with your identity, what to expect from transition if you decide to pursue medical and/or surgical transition now or in the future, how to have fun and safe sex while trans, and much, much more.
Here’s what this series is about: Exploring the diversity of trans identity, discussing issues the trans community faces, thinking about your own relationship with gender, and learning how to support trans and gender nonconforming people in your life.
There is one thing we’re NOT here for: We’re not here to tell you whether you—or anyone you know—are or aren’t trans or what you should do about that.
We also want you to know that there’s no one right way to be trans, your gender isn’t fixed forever in space and time, and there isn’t any such thing as “trans enough.” Everyone defines and thinks about gender very differently. That includes cisgender people! It’s up to you to decide what gender feels and looks like for you. You’re always enough of anything and everything.
Experiences of gender are highly varied from person to person and all over the world. Some people experience an intense identification with their assigned gender, or, conversely, another gender, in which case they may decide to transition to feel more comfortable in their bodies. Transition can be social, but may include medical and surgical aspects too. Others may struggle with their gender for a while, or experience a fluid relationship that changes from day to day or over time—like a trans woman who later identifies as agender after transition. Some people don’t want or need to pursue medical or surgical transition and may not make any big social changes, either. Some know that their experience of gender doesn’t match their sex assigned at birth, but they may not consider themselves trans. Everyone needs a safe place to explore their relationship with gender. This is a judgment-free zone.
Gender is a huge subject that might be even more complicated than you think.
For starters, sex (a biological determination) and gender (a social and personal identity) are two different things, though they’re definitely related, and neither one is simple. Sex is usually assigned in utero or after birth on the basis of externally-visible genitals, and it comes with a presumed gender—boys have penises, girls have vulvas. But when it comes to sex, which people often think of as “male” or “female,” did you know that the World Health Organization estimates around 1.7% of the populationexternal link, opens in a new tab is intersex? Being intersex can look like all kinds of things, and sometimes like nothing at all, with some people not even realizing they have an extra sex chromosome, an anatomical variation that doesn’t align with binaristic understandings of sex, or an endocrine system with some special features until adulthood (if ever). Historically, and still in some regions of the world, intersex people are pressured to undergo medical and surgical treatments because their natural variations are viewed as a pathology.
For many people assigned male or female, their assigned sex is the same as their gender—but some may find that the sex and gender they were labeled with at birth don’t mesh with their internal identity and experience of gender. Intersex people can have a complicated relationship with gender because their sex doesn’t align with a binary and society assumes they must be transgender even if they don’t feel that way. And despite what you might have heard about feelings of being “trapped in the wrong body” or “always knowing,” everyone comes to an understanding about their gender in a huge variety of ways.
Right out of the gate, gender just isn’t ever as simple as “girl” and “boy”! In addition to men and women, there are a host of other genders and experiences out there. Some transgender people don’t see themselves as men or women, though they may pursue hormones, surgery, and other transition options to help them feel more comfortable in their own skin. They may identify as nonbinary, genderqueer, agender, androgyne, genderfluid, genderfuck, or a huge array of other things—and that’s just within Western frameworks of thinking about gender. In India, hijra are assigned male at birth, but live as women, like muxe in Mexico, while in some Native American cultures, two-spirit people may experience gender in a variety of ways. Nadleeh people in Navajo traditions, who identify beyond male and female gender definitions, are another example of gender diversity in Native American communities.
But not everyone who experiences gender variance is transgender or identifies that way. Some people don’t identify as cis or trans. They may also use terms like genderqueer, agender, androgyne, or genderfluid to describe themselves. They may express their gender identity in ways that don’t align with society’s idea of what they’re “supposed” to do or look like—such as some butch lesbians. While they aren’t trans, these gender nonconforming individuals still don’t feel comfortable with the sexes assigned at birth and the genders assigned to them by society, and they don’t have to. You may have heard derisive comments made about members of these communities—“making it up for attention” or “special snowflakes,” perhaps, but the people who make those comments are one hundred percent wrong. Gender nonconforming people, regardless of their gender, are experiencing a very real phenomenon and deserve respect and accommodations.
Whether you’re transgender, gender nonconforming, questioning, or just curious, we hope you enjoy our journey together as we talk about gender, culture, and identity. Over the course of the summer, we’ll be covering all kinds of things, but there’s always more to learn.
