Right on.

Well said, Suzanne. Sound logic, as opposed to flawed logic, and a good explanation of the subtleties of being trans.

Believe me when I say that being a masculine woman was just not going to make me happy. I pushed the boundaries of "woman" past the point Gold suggested we should, and if I hadn't made the decision to transition, I don't think I'd be around right now. Not only was Gold's opinion piece full of leaps in logic, devoid of other theorists who've done a better job analyzing gender identity, and chock full of contradictions, but it was plainly hurtful.
I'm so glad you exist, Suzanne. I'm glad we trans folk have made it through our journeys when even are closest allies question our motives or lives. Thank you for your words.

I'm not at all sold Suzanne, could you use that fuzzy logic again?

All widget are sprockets but not all sprockets are widgets?

I mean your argument seems like a radio ad for Netflix
" What is the sum of all existence?"
" Spastic colon"

I wish this sort of love mongering would be banned from public forums.

Thanks for saying what I have been feeling!

Excellent article, if, as always, it seems, we have to go back to trans-101 for all the people who just don't seem to get it. Anyway, I try to follow this one fundamental tenet:

A person knows themselves better than anyone else does:

I know if my knee hurts better than my doctor does, better than my personal trainer, better than my friend who's a runner. I know my gender better than my doctor does, better than any psychologist they might want to put between me and drugs, and any self-appointed activist who finds my identity inconvenient to their constructed dichotomy.

That pretty much sums it up for me.

As someone who is both bisexual and transgender, I've heard my share of claims that my feelings don't exist. Many such claims come from people who call upon their own perceptions without having done a shred of research. Such claims often come from people who have never had to question their own sexuality or gender identity, and they assume these matters come easily to everyone.

I would respond to the post that started this controversy, but it looks like it's been removed. A world in which we were all free to play with Barbies and basketballs as we so chose sounds wonderful, but it wouldn't stop me from feeling female. Transgender isn't a response to socially enforced gender stereotypes - in fact, those stereotypes cause us harm.

I came late to the yes/no trans debate that happened this week of finals at my university, but I wanted to thank you, Suzanne, for your eloquent response, and I wanted to add mine to the show of hands indicating that TG people are real.

Suzanne well done!

If I could add this observation:

I have personally and academically struggled to find a constructive way to address the "reality" of being transgender in a predominantly cisgender society. I struggle not because I am unable to summon the words, but rather because the words seem to consistently fail to connect with audiences that do not live this peculiar existence. I recently spoke to a group the graduate students in clinical social work at Arizona State University about the experiential nature of being transgender/transsexual in society today and the question of privilege came up.

It’s inevitable that privilege should come up in this discussion because this class full of accomplished scholars struggled, from amidst their vantage point of cisgender privilege, to wrap their minds around how I could feel so profoundly alienated within my own body and wish to repair that fundamental mismatch between conscious mind and physical embodiment. From that evolved, a thoughtful and nuanced discussion building toward a more complete understanding of cisgender assumption and cisgender privilege:

To wit ,, cisgender assumption (vis-à-vis the transgender experience) can be defined as:

The assumption that other people experience their intrinsic and subconscious sense of gender identity in the same way you experience yours . . .

From that erroneous assumption, you experience no impediment and feel no censure to projecting your cisgenderism upon others . . .

Finally, assuming that, because you do not experience gender dissonance that it doesn’t exist. However, if you concede that it does, from your point of view the only reasonable explanation for it must be psychopathology.

Once they stepped out of their old paradigm, they were better able to approach (some more empathically than others) an objective understanding of cisgender privilege. Thus the understanding that:

The notion that cisgender attributes are generally and uncritically assumed to be “natural” and thus “normal.”

Further, that if an individual’s lived experience is not appropriately defined by “gender normative” models, then that experience is deemed invalid, “unnatural” and “abnormal.”

Assuming that the male/female gender binary provides an accurate and comprehensive model of gender identity.

It was a productive discussion that I hope left a few future clinical social workers with a better understanding than they arrived with that evening. To conclude I shared with them my lived experience of having transitioned gender. The sublime reality of being “whole” is an experience that transcends and indeed frustrates labels like “male or female-identified.” If I were to speculate, it may be that the elusive feeling of wholeness and completeness is what, standing at the door between male and female, eludes many in seeking to understand our motivations as transpeople for undertaking gender transition in the first place.

I described it to the students this way:

Perhaps my brain now “sees” clearly, what it has always expected to see, a congruently “female” form complete with a complex sensory system that perceives the world, and is in turn perceived by the world, in fundamental harmony with an innately “female” spirit. Are various aspects of my physical embodiment essentially prosthetics? Certainly, yet in the primitive, ancient places of the brain where innateness resides – it is sufficient and there is a measure of peace . . . at last.

To conclude, I left them with this suggestion:

Respect the expressed identities and lived experiences of other individuals – resist the temptation to overlay your assumptions upon them.

Check your own privilege and challenge the notion that there is some terrible hidden cost to you for failing to uphold a raft of socially and morally suspect assumptions about other human beings.

In short – get used to asking yourself the honest question – What’s it to me?

And . . . be willing to live with the answer.

First off, I'd like to applaud this post. It is much better-written than Mr. Gold's post was, by miles. That said, the topic of both has always intrigued me (which is why I read through Mr. Gold's cringe-worthy post - it was the first published piece I had seen on the topic).

I'd like to say a couple things before I start: One, I'm seventeen years old, and the only prejudice I encounter is that which takes place in the halls of high school, so you'll have to forgive me my inexperience and probably a little naivety (please do, though, point out and explain where any flaws in my thinking are). Two, I don't want to tell anyone else how they should think or identify themselves. I would much rather discuss possibilities about what the concepts of gender and transgenderedness really are.

First, I'd like to question the idea that gender is a spectrum rather than a binary, while biological sex (with an incredibly small number of exceptions) is a binary. Would this not create a significantly larger population of people who feel out of place or incongruent with their bodies, if everyone who falls into the greys between black and white does not match with their body, which will fall at one end of the spectrum or the other? Does the lack of a binary gender scale not suggest that there would be many people who would not be comfortable in the body they were born with, or after transitioning?

On another note, if gender really is merely the result of outdated gender norms in society (and that feeling of incongruence is the result of those stereotypes being deeply ingrained from birth), the question is not "does it exist" but "should it exist". I.E., obviously gender stereotyping should not exist, but if the concept of gender as a whole - the idea that "male" or "female" means anything other than the set of genitalia one was born with - does have its roots in gender stereotyping, should it have to exist?

In short, what I'm trying to say is, should there be a need for a word to describe someone who doesn't fall into the norm? Can't we all just be who we are, and not need to put quite possibly unnecessary labels on who we are? (Am I just clinging to youthful idealism? :P)

Fuck yes lady. Right on! How can someone discount our lives and our feelings unless they have lived our lives?