Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Trans (But Were Afraid to Ask)

by Brynn Tannehill

Gender identity and expression don’t always match and that’s just a normal part of human diversity. For instance, there are people who identify as women who were born female (cisgender women) and who also prefer to have short hair and play contact sports, which are behaviors typically assumed to be something men do (referred to as “masculine leaning gender expression”).

gender dysphoria, which is an intense and persistent sense of distress or discomfort with their birth sex.

The word “transgender” is an adjective umbrella term that covers a wide spectrum of people. Transgender also includes persons who are gender non-conforming. Gender non-conforming people may not consider themselves transgender, but have an appearance or gender expression that does not conform to gender stereotypes.4 In contrast to the term “transgender,” transsexual is not an umbrella term, and many people who identify as transgender do not identify as transsexual. While transsexual refers to people who have or desire to medically transition, it is usually considered an outdated or clinical term.

According to the GLAAD Media Guide: “…the term cross-dresser is typically used to refer to men who occasionally wear clothes, makeup, and accessories culturally associated with women. Those men typically identify as heterosexual. This activity is a form of gender expression and not done for entertainment purposes.

Every transsexual is transgender, but not every transgender person is transsexual. A transsexual is a person who experiences dysphoria (mental discomfort) with their societal role and their appearance as it relates to gender and sex, and attempt to change it medically. Other transgender sub-sets do not necessarily experience this type of dysphoria, such as gender non-binary, genderqueer, or gender fluid people.12 Transsexual is something of an archaic, clinical term, much the same as homosexual is.

“When Bryan was young… Sorry. When Brynn was young, she played soccer.” • Keep the pronouns consistent: this is a hard one, especially for parents and siblings who have known a transgender person since childhood. When referring to a transgender person in the past (pre-transition) tense it is even easier to make mistakes with pronouns and names. Again, quickly apologize, and move on.

Myth 15. God made you this way, and the only way to make God happy is to just endure it77 So let me get this straight. God intentionally made me in a way that causes suffering? In order to make your God happy, I have to forgo treatment that alleviates this suffering? And did you give this same advice to people with cleft palates?

meet, and you introduce yourself as Dave. I take one look at you, and declare, “You don’t look like a Dave. You look more like a Steve, so I’ll call you Steve. Nice to meet you Steve.” It doesn’t matter if I think you look like a Steve. You identify as Dave, and someone who deliberately calls you the wrong name is being uncivil. When someone uses the wrong name or pronouns with a transgender person, this is deliberately offensive, and would be treated as such.

Several studies have shown the effects of bias against transgender people in employment, even in places with non-discrimination ordinances. An undercover study by the Washington DC Office of Human Rights showed that almost half of employers preferred less qualified cisgender applicants to transgender ones.81 Another study showed that when transgender women transition, their pay drops by about a third.82

16 percent of Americans know someone who is transgender,

When you have any conversation about the transgender community, you have to include transgender women of color. They’re dying at a rate about 22 times higher than gay men in hate crimes.85

When someone continues to do something deliberately offensive simply because they don’t see it as offensive and hurtful, it exposes a lack of empathy.

This is regarded differently from any other sort of genetic or sexual history issue where consent and violence are concerned. For example, suppose a woman had a Jewish grandmother. She failed to disclose her ancestry prior to sex, and was beaten to death by her anti-Semitic partner afterwards because he found out. It would be difficult to find a judge or jury willing to consider what she did rape, much less a mitigating circumstance for her murderer. Similarly, failing to disclose that you have black, white, Latino, or any other sort of heritage does not constitute rape or justification for violence.

Nor is there a legal requirement to list surgeries you have had. It would be exceptionally hard to convince a jury, much less the police or a prosecutor, that you were raped by fraud because your partner did not disclose that they had breast augmentation, rhinoplasty, or labial reduction.

In the True Trans video, Our Lady J states, “I found that it’s easier to date people who don’t really identify—period. There’s just a fluidity that has to be there. And I think if you have a rigid definition of your sexuality you’re going to have a hard time being open to someone who breaks that definition.”

Just to make it even more complicated, how do you label relationships between two transgender people? Does identity supersede sex at birth? Does surgical status trump identity when assigning labels? If a man has been only with male-identified individuals, but some of them are transgender, do they count as bi or gay? Do you get to keep your gold star gay (or straight) award if you’ve slept with a transgender person? I, and many others, would argue that gender identity matters most.

Bottom line up front, however: if you take away nothing else from this chapter, know that every major medical and mental health care professional organization in the US (including the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, and the American Psychiatric Association) officially supports access to affirming care for transgender people, and the necessity of treatment both legally and for insurance purposes.129 As such, the positions presented here are not simply my own, they are those of the vast majority of the medical profession.

One of the most common attacks on access for medical care for transgender people are concern trolls who ask the leading question, “What if they end up regretting it?” Their usual goal is to lead people down a rhetorical path towards supporting “reparative therapy” on transgender people, which is basically “pray away the gay” with a different label. They leave this detail out, of course, along with the fact that no one has ever demonstrated an effective way to change someone’s gender identity. Also left out is that the overwhelming majority of peer-reviewed studies on regret rates show them to be low by any objective standard.

Myth 8: They’re giving 10-year-old children hormones! No. Doctors are prescribing drugs which block the onset of puberty in order to give the child’s brain time to mature, and to see how their gender identity solidifies. Generally these drugs are not prescribed until they are 12 or 13.218 One of the most commonly used drugs to block puberty in transgender children is leuprolide, and has been used on children who aren’t transgender to prevent precocious (early onset) puberty.219 It has been approved for this purpose by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) since 1993.

The research on how to best serve transgender youth is unambiguous. Transgender youth who have families that support their transitions and affirm their identities have far better mental and physical health outcomes than those who are not supported.

Transition regret is rare While covered elsewhere, it is worth reiterating that the actual research and statistics show just how unusual transition regret is. Virtually every modern study puts it below 4 percent, and most estimates put it between 1 and 2 percent.305 306 307 308 309 In some other recent longitudinal studies, none of the subjects expressed regret over medically transitioning.310 311 Compare a regret rate of 1–4 percent with regret rates for other surgeries, which runs as high as 65 percent in the case of cosmetic surgery, according to one survey.312 In short, if you simply went by verifiable regret rates, you’d have to disallow gastric bypass, rhinoplasty, and breast augmentation long before disallowing transition-related care.

The NCAA instituted guidelines in 2011 that were less stringent than the IOC at the time.325 (The two policies are now nearly identical.) They do not require surgery, and they require only one year on testosterone suppression for male-to-female transgender athletes. The conclusions of the consulting medical experts on the NCAA policy were unambiguous: It is also important to know that any strength and endurance advantages a transgender woman arguably may have as a result of her prior testosterone levels dissipate after about one year of estrogen or testosterone-suppression therapy. According to medical experts on this issue, the assumption that a transgender woman competing on a women’s team would have a competitive advantage outside the range of performance and competitive advantage or disadvantage that already exists among female athletes is not supported by evidence.

we have over a decade of Olympic and NCAA competition in which transgender people have been allowed to compete, but have not dominated by any definition.

In 2014 Dr. Keith Ablow, formerly of the Fox News Medical A-Team, dismissed any biological origins of gender dysphoria, stating: I don’t believe we have definitive data (although many psychiatrists with very impressive credentials, who seem to mean well, assert that we do) that any male or female soul has ever in the history of the world been born into the wrong anatomic gender. Let me put that more clearly: I am not convinced by any science I can find that people with definitively male DNA and definitively male anatomy can actually be locked in a cruel joke of nature because they are actually female.336

Eighty-seven percent of Americans know someone who is lesbian or gay, but only 16 percent know a transgender person.1129 Thus media portrayals of transgender people are likely to have a disproportionate effect on how cisgender people perceive a transgender person

Historically, anything I have seen coming from the entertainment industry about transgender people has been mocking, demeaning and cruel.

In 2016 news broke that Mark Ruffalo had produced a movie (Anything) co-starring Matt Bomer (a cisgender, gay man) as a transgender prostitute.1130 When people asked why a transgender person wasn’t cast, actress and transgender activist Jen Richards alleged that Ruffalo didn’t even consider anyone else for the role.1131 Richards did audition for a supporting role in the movie, but was turned down because she “doesn’t look trans enough.”1132 Many in the transgender community were appalled by this.

They want to watch portrayals of transgender people as the flotsam and jetsam of society to feel better about themselves, the same way they watch television shows about hoarders.

transgender women lose 32 percent of their income when they transition.

I’m not outraged, I’m just exasperated and tired. Exasperated that allies missed the point; tired of explaining over and over again how myths, misconceptions, and confirmation bias are a lethal combination to the transgender community. And Sarah Silverman’s video is part of the killing joke.

the fiercest transgender allies in America are the parents of transgender children. Wayne Maines and Debi Jackson were both conservative, religious Republicans before their children turned out to be transgender girls.1194 1195 Suddenly, with their own loving, beloved, and vulnerable children under attack from the same conservatives they used to agree with, they turned and fought. In the process of loving, accepting, and protecting their children, they were finally able to empathize with transgender people as a whole.