“I don’t need to have intense, unbearable gender dysphoria in order to be trans. I just need to prefer living as a woman over living as a man. Being uncomfortable in my body isn’t a requirement. Being more comfortable as a woman is all it takes.” - Zinnia Jones
One of the biggest struggles I’ve had with my transition since coming out as transgender is reconciling my own story with those of other trans people, and with the narratives that are constantly spouted at us. Most of the stories you hear are about people who’ve Known Since They Were Four and experience extreme body and social dysphoria, and need to transition to escape that pain.
I don’t remember ever really feeling that way. I never had a sense of transness as a child, or as a teenager, or even as an adult until my 30s. I don’t recall hating my body or my genitals when I was younger. I mostly remember being told I’m a boy and feeling a gigantic “meh” about it. People seem to expect that every trans person experiences a voice in their head screaming “YOU ARE NOT THE GENDER YOU WERE ASSIGNED”, but I don’t remember hearing that voice as a child or a teenager. But neither did I feel any connection to masculinity, other than a sense of resignation that, “This is what people say I am, so I guess that’s what I should be.” I got pretty good at performing it; after a while, I started liking how people reacted to me as a masculine person, so I figured that meant masculinity was okay for me after all. I was still a “weird guy” who didn’t quite connect with most men or masculine-coded things, but I figured I was just an eccentric dude in general.
When I started meeting other trans people, I was fascinated by their stories but couldn’t internalize them as something that applied to me. After all, I seemed to be okay with my body and my social role, even if not especially happy with them. Many of my transgender friends reported being unable to function or to care about themselves unless they went through with transition, but I seemed to be functional and healthy as a man. Still, I found an affinity with trans people that grew as time went on, and I grew more and more disconnected from my masculinity the more that I learned about transness.
What made me recognize myself - first as genderqueer and then as transfeminine - was not internal dysphoria, but envy - of wanting to be something else. I saw a woman at a concert and felt intensely jealous of her for everything she was able to be that I felt I was not: Beautiful, vibrant, comfortable, free. I recognized that there were things I wanted that living as a man couldn’t give me, and that I had the right and ability to change that if I wanted to. I didn’t transition to escape gender dysphoria - I transitioned to pursue gender euphoria.
My girlfriend came up with a perfect analogy: “It’s like living in a city filled with smog all your life, then breathing fresh air for the first time.” You can live in the smog, sure, and you can live a reasonably comfortable existence there. But you won’t thrive. You won’t grow. You won’t live. I probably could have lived the rest of my life as my old self and been okay. But living as Julia makes me infinitely happier. My friends and coworkers say that I’m less anxious, that I have a twinkle in my eye that wasn’t there before, that I’m vibrant. Going from “meh” to “YES” made an enormous difference in my life. For me, it was the difference between passive acceptance and affirmative consent. And who knows? Maybe I wouldn’t have been able to live in the smog forever. Maybe this was heading off terrible and destructive things that would have come later, had I not transitioned when I did.
The argument could be made that what I experienced was, in fact, a form of dysphoria; that my lifelong ambivalence and disconnection with masculinity was dysphoria from the beginning. And that’s probably not far off from the truth! But because my form of dysphoria doesn’t match up with the Clear-Cut Acceptable Trans Narrative, it’s been used to debate and negate my transness and the necessity of my transition. And frankly, considering how overwhelmingly positive transition has been for me, that’s absolute nonsense. We allow people to go through all sorts of other massive, life-upending changes to improve themselves and their circumstances without half the consternation associated with gender transition: career changes, moving to a different city or country, starting or ending relationships, having children, starting a business, the list goes on and on. If transition can hold the same benefits and potential for happiness as any of these changes, without causing harm to anybody, why is it so much more maligned and strictly guarded and stigmatized?
Trans identities shouldn’t have to be a matter of life or death before we’re allowed to pursue them. Don’t we have inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Doesn’t an ounce of prevention beat a pound of cure? Isn’t preventative care cheaper and more effective than emergency care? Even if our transitions are based on the pursuit of gender euphoria rather than fleeing gender dysphoria, that doesn’t make them any less valid. The more people who are able to transition because they choose to, instead of being forced to wait until the 11th hour where suicide and destructive behaviors become an imminent risk, the better for those people, for all trans people, and for society as a whole.
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