The Sun is a British tabloid with a mixed reputation transgender wise. This is an interesting story, though, and presented with respect, sensational headline aside.
There often are no simple solutions when it comes to handle family when transitioning. Often the act of not transitioning hurts them more than doing so, however, and it will definitely hurt a gender dysphoric transgender person, like Emma here.
In any case, I know of a lot of families where the couple has decided to stay together through and after the transitioning process.
The Sun reports:
Family and friends have all accepted Jackie’s transition and [Emma’s wife] Julie says that keeping the secret for so many years was the worst thing.
She says: “We were constantly worrying about what everybody else would think, creeping in and out of the house, worrying that people would see.
“But friends and neighbours have been brilliant.”
In July, 2018, they renewed their vows in a beautiful ceremony attended by friends and family and Jackie acknowledges that many marriages wouldn’t survive a partner coming out as transgender.
“The prospect of losing Julie was a factor in it taking so long,“ she says. "I always wanted to feel like we could stay together and I feel very lucky that she stood by me and agreed to renew our vows.”
Felix Conrad (AKA Elektra) is one of those transgender activists who break every rule in the book when adressing trangender identities and coping mechanisms.
They are male to female transgender, suffering from gender dysphoria, but have not transitioned.This must not in any way be taken as support of those transphobes who think that transitioning is a bad idea – far from it. Conrad has consistently expressed strong support for all those who do so.
But Conrad does not shy away from the complexity of such a decision, and that there are a lot of factors that have to be taken into consideration, when you consider such a step. The fact that many of us live in bigoted and unforgiving surroundings is one of them.
Conrad is also very open about the sexual dreams and desires of transgender people. Some transgender people restrict their discussions about transgender sexuality online, because they know that it can be used against them by transphobes who want to reduce transgender identities to sexual perversions. You know: If a cis woman has a kink, she has a kink. If a trans woman has a kink, she is that kink.
If you are some shade of gender variant, struggle with shame and/or confusion regarding your sexuality, and are not afraid of some explicit discussions and imagery, you might want to take a look at Felix’ site Novagirl.
Enlightened crossdreamers understand the quantum paradox of transition (that it is both the answer and not the answer). They see a duality that can not be solved, leading them to conclude that there is no single answer: each individual with the transgender condition has to do whatever they must to find love and happiness.
Self has talked to ten trans people about what they have learned since transitioning.
Melissa says:
The thing I wish I knew before I transitioned is the degree to which my male privilege mattered in my professional life. I’m politically and socially progressive, and I wasn’t completely unaware of privilege on a conceptual basis. However, transitioning from male to female brings the concept of privilege into sharp relief and teaches you lessons fast. It can work for you and it can work against you.
Max says:
You are not obligated to be a trans role model. With how fast the community is changing, six-plus years in means I’m already a trans “elder.” It’s easy to say “no” to educating cisgender people about trans issues, but I had to learn to enforce boundaries with other trans people, too. I don’t have limitless emotional resources to serve as mentor, adviser, big brother, or therapist just because I also happen to be transgender.
Laura says:
Another thing I would tell myself is that it’s fine to take small steps. It’s all right to widen your circle of support and of those who know you are out however slow or fast you need. Speak up when you and only you decide it’s time. People will support you and love you, and if they don’t they truly aren’t worth your time. Also, you can’t help others until you are happy and healthy yourself, especially through such a rightfully needy time. You need to concentrate on yourself and your requirements—and that’s OK.
Ada says:
It takes a long time to learn the finer points of performing your gender in the world. Nearly two years in, I’ve only just recently acquired confidence and skill in how I dress and present, and I’d have been less hard on younger me if I had understood that every nervous thrift store trip, every cautious exploration into a new kind of makeup, every uncomfortable moment was just a part of a gently unfolding process.
Cornell University presents a meta-survey over new research on gender variance and transgender lives:
We conducted a systematic literature review of all peer-reviewed articles published in English between 1991 and June 2017 that assess the effect of gender transition on transgender well-being. We identified 56 studies that consist of primary research on this topic, of which 52 (93%) found that gender transition improves the overall well-being of transgender people, while 4 (7%) report mixed or null findings. We found no studies concluding that gender transition causes overall harm. As an added resource, we separately include 17 additional studies that consist of literature reviews and practitioner guidelines.
The most common one was that homosexuality was an acquired sexual perversion caused by the propaganda of the homosexual movement. If you could protect children from the gay movement, there would not be any lesbians.
This is obviously the same argument that is used today to stop lesbians from adopting children. Lesbian parenting is unnatural, will hurt the children and make them gay and so on and so forth.
The desitance-argument
The desistance-argument forms the foundation of the TERF argument against the the identity of transgender people. Since so many gender variant people, in the end, do not chose to transition, the TERFs assume that none of them are really of the gender they claim to be. They have been duped by trans activists.
This is a completely misleading reading of the research available, as it mixes up gender nonconformity with gender identity.
Variation in gender expression is used as a way of exploring both identity and sexuality among straight, gay and queer people. You will find “butch”, “femme” and “androgynous” people among all of them.
The majority of these people are not gender dysphoric. They do not experience a severe misalignment between their gender identity and their assigned gender, or between mind and body. They simply express masculinity, femininity or any other aspect of cultural gender in a way that feels right for them.
Misleading research
Unfortunately the previous edition of the American Psychatric Manual (DSM-IV) had a too wide definition of what was then called a “gender identity disorder”, including people who were not gender dysphoric. This has been fixed in the current edition, but some researchers have used the old diagnoses.
Brynn Tannehill has written a good summary of the debacle here. She writes:
“For starters, the most cited study (Steensma) which alleges a 84 percent desistance rate, did not actually differentiate between children with consistent, persistent and insistent gender dysphoria, kids who socially transitioned, and kids who just acted more masculine or feminine than their birth sex and culture allowed for. In other words, it treated gender non-conformance the same as gender dysphoria. Worse, the study could not locate 45.3 percent of the children for follow up, and made the assumption that all of them were desisters.”
When Dr. Steensma went back in 2013 and looked at the intensity of dysphoria these children felt, it turned out that it was actually a very good indicator of which children would transition.
The medical establishment has actually caught up with the new understanding of transgender identities, as reflected in the DSM-5 and the new WHO health manual, the ICD-11. They both accept gender dysphoria or gender incongruence as real phenomena. Experiencing another gender than the one assigned by birth is not considered a mental illness, and the categories do justify medical intervention and support.
In other words: If we stick to the distinction between the larger set (gender nonconformity) and the smaller set (gender dysphoria), the TERF argument falls apart.
Accepting the continuum
That being said, this new binary (gender nonconforming vs. gender dysphporic) causes new problem, as it may be read to mean that there is a clear boundary between the two sets. There is not.
During the process of self-discovery some transgender people (in the wide, umbrella, sense of the term), come to the conclusion that they can live and present as their assigned gender. Others, who used to swear that they belonged to their assigned gender, find out that they did not.
Some find that neither of the two genders fit their experienced identity. They are non-binary.
Others do not experience gender dysphoria, as defined by the DSM-5, but do experience gender incongruence, as described by the ICD-11. There is room for such transgender and non-binary people as well, in both manuals.
Less than two percent regret transitioning
Some people do regret transitioning. Given the complexity of sex and gender, that is to be expected. It could be that they misunderstood their own feelings at the time, or what transitioning would entail. Or it could be that the pressure of living up to the gender stereotypes of a transphobic society is too much to bear.
That being said: The idea that there is a large number of regretters out there that proves that transitioning is wrong is complete nonsense.
In any case, the very existence of people who decide to detransition – for whatever reason – cannot be used to invalidate the reality of the gender identity of trans people.
The book talks about the bravery of those who come out as transgender. Deshane is right in criticizing this approach:
Transgender people are not brave, because for me to call them brave means that I’ve naturalized their position of oppression and assigned it to them as a personality trait.
Instead of critiquing a medical and legal system that made (and still makes) their life difficult, assigning bravery to their identity, means that all those who fail against this system are cowards.
To call Caitlyn Jenner brave for coming out obscures the fact that she has money and power, and it obscures the everyday reality for a trans woman of color who may not come out because she is legitimately afraid for her safety.
Bravery has nothing to do with transgender identity, and to see the bravery myth perpetuated in small ways in this work is my only substantive critique. And even then, it still won’t stop me from recommending it because there is still so much work to be done on this issue.
Given the stigma attached to gender variance and the unforgiving way many treat trans people staying in the closet might be a matter of survival. Besides, many do not transition because of their love for their families. That might be a tragedy, but it is not cowardice. And finally, not all transgender people feel the need to transition. We should not hold that against them.
Gwen, a transgender woman who let people ask her questions about her life on an internet forum was inundated with even more when the BBC reported on her story.
How can I support my friend who is transitioning?
“The best advice is to just listen to what they have to say and try not to make it a big deal.
"When I was starting to transition, all I wanted was for life to feel ‘normal’ again.
"I didn’t really want to talk about transitioning too much, but it was nice to have friends who just listened to me on the days where it was especially hard and told me they loved me anyway.”
I work as a security guard in a store and have a male customer who wears a dress and make-up. I always address my customers as “sir” or “madam”. What address should I use with them?
“The best thing would be to address someone by what it looks like they’re going for. If this customer comes in every day in a dress and make-up, I would assume they wanted to be greeted as 'Ms’.
"It’s always best to go by what you see and then, if they correct you, just go by what they’d rather be called instead.
"Maybe this person isn’t comfortable being called 'Ms’ yet, but that’s something only they could know.”
Has the change affected your relationship between you and your girlfriend?
“My girlfriend and I actually dated a year before I transitioned. I broke up with her out of fear of her breaking my heart and breaking up with me, after telling her that I felt I should have been born a woman.
"I should have told her though, because when I finally did tell her a year later, she was 110% accepting and supportive and we started dating again shortly thereafter.
"I’ve been with her since a couple of weeks after starting HRT [hormone replacement therapy].”
Life is messy. There are those who regret transitioning. Maybe they made a mistake, or maybe their friends or family would not accept them. Whatever the reason, they deserve our respect and our help.
Keep in mind, though, that many of the people who talk about regretters do so because they fear gender variance. They want to ‘prove’ that trans people should not go down that road.
They are wrong. The great majority of those who transition report that their lives have gotten better. And they do not regret what they have done.
That does not mean that all trans people need to transition. Far from it. But those who do need to, deserve our support.
Emma Pearson of The Mirror tells the story about Alana McLaughlin, a transgender woman who for years tried to “man up” in the hyper-masculine environment of the US Special Forces.
Research shows that trans Americans are actually twice as likely to serve in the military as non-transgender people, which tells us that Alana is not the only one trying this approach.
It never works.
Alana says: “I joined the military initially because I felt like it was my only option to either force myself into manhood somehow or die.
"I wanted very much to be actively engaged in combat so I would have the opportunity to get myself killed. I view it very much as passive suicide.
"I fought, shot, lifted weights, I grew beards and I rode a Harley and it didn’t change anything. I would still cry myself to sleep at night.”
Pearson says that Alana has now made a group of firm friends who accept her as a transgender woman:
And now she hopes to find someone special to share in her new life.
