A reader writes: “Asking this question on behalf of all the questioning folks out there: If you’re comfortable sharing, what all have you identified as on your gender journey? And what times (if any) were particularly tough/confusing?”
Questioning gender can be very difficult, although it’s not as hard, I would think, as it was way back when, when there was just one model or “blueprint” to choose from, and everyone was expected to go down a prescribed path – if they fit the established criteria.
At least now, there are different options and alternatives available, and information is out there for almost everyone in almost every situation. But that comes with its own set of problems.
I can’t say that I personally was ever questioning my gender – at least not in the sense that we talk about it today – because I was sure for over forty years that I was a girl/woman. I didn’t think that was what I was supposed to be, but I thought that was the way it was and that there was nothing I could do about it. I didn’t know that there was anyone else like me, and I didn’t know that what I was experiencing had a label and was an actual identified “thing.”
Once I discovered that, there was again very little questioning involved, because I knew what I was going to do – transition and live as a man. I would say that my questioning came in after I started transition and found that I wasn’t really fitting what I considered to be the “standard man” mode. That’s when, thanks to my therapist, I adopted the permanent label of trans man, and I have not changed that since.
So my gender identity went from girl to woman to man (for a very brief time) to trans man. And that is where it has stayed. And the most confusing time for me was as I said above – when I didn’t really feel like I fit as a “man,” and I wasn’t sure what that meant or where I could go from there.
But I had a lot of models to look at, because I knew, when I found out what “transgender” was, that I would transition, I had learned to use the Internet by then, and I was able to see lots of guys who might have identified as men or who might have identified as trans men, but who were out and visible and who I could relate to.
Even though growing up as a girl and woman was tough for me in many ways, it wasn’t the same as living an entire life of really questioning my gender. It wasn’t the same as having a bunch of paths out there that could be available to me and trying to decide which one fit me and which one to choose. That is almost more difficult, in some ways, than what I went through, which was not knowing that there were any paths at all.
I think it’s also easier if you are very certain of your path. There are many people out there who absolutely know that they have gender “issues,” and they absolutely know how they are going to resolve them. They are going to follow a blueprint of some sort. It might not be the exact one prescribed by the medical and psychiatric communities, or it might. But whether it is a traditional path or one given a few personal tweaks, it is a definite path, nonetheless.
While having a lot of choices and a lot of paths to explore might sound like a very positive thing, psychologists have determined that the more choices we have (in almost anything in life), the more unhappy we become. People tend to be happier when their choices are limited.
So while I think that the whole exploration thing is essential for many people, and that no one should be forced into a specific blueprint or road map that is not right for them or feel pressured to make any decisions if they are not sure, questioning and self-exploration can have its own difficulties.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t continue to question. You should question as long as you still have a question in your mind. You have to learn to adjust to the ambiguity and uncertainty, possibly seeing it on the road before you for a long time to come, and I think that would be very difficult –but, at the same time, very liberating, if you approach it that way. If you approach it as a challenge, not a problem, it will be much more fun, educational, and self-fulfilling.
The most important thing, in my opinion, is to take your time as you are figuring out the answers to your questions. Take all the time that you need, whether it be forty days or forty years. One good thing about questioning is that you get to set your own timetable, and you don’t know how long that timetable should take, because you don’t know what’s at the end of it. So just keep exploring.
That was my long answer to a short question that was really addressed to the readers, not to me. So readers who are, or ever were, questioning, the questions are: “What all have you identified as on your gender journey? And what times (if any) were particularly tough/confusing?”
This post originally appeared on Matt Kailey's award-winning website Tranifesto.com. Republished with permission.
