Is Transition A Cop-Out? Part 2
Last week I offered some thoughts on whether transition is some kind of cop out. Here are a few more reasons I think such a claim misses the mark.
Why transition, anyway? I have never met any trans person who transitioned in an attempt to gain approval or fit in. I have met dozens and dozens of trans people who transitioned to alleviate the constant, heartbreaking, mind-numbing pain of gender dysphoria. To take myself as an example, it is nice to escape the daily confusion that followed me when I was visibly androgynous–but this is so damn low on my list of reasons to transition, it doesn’t even rank. People are still confused by or biased towards me on a regular basis. But I don’t mind so much, because they are confused by me–the real me, as I know myself–not by a person I don’t recognize in the mirror. People were ignorant before I transitioned and they’re still ignorant now. Whatever. I didn’t transition for them. I transitioned for myself.
Most of us will never fit in, anyway. Many of us will be far more marginalized after transition than we were before. If anybody does transition in an attempt to gain approval, they are likely to be horribly disappointed. Transsexuals are very near the bottom of the social approval hierarchy.
Transition is a last resort. People agonize for years and years–often decades–before choosing to transition. I have talked with hundreds of trans people in community spaces and online, and I have yet to meet a single person who rushed into transition or found the choice even remotely easy. I have never met someone who did not pursue every possible avenue to alleviate dysphoria before embarking on medical transition, including therapy, antidepressants, self-medicating with drugs and alcohol, denying and suppressing the feelings, presenting as their identified gender only in private, living as an androgynous person without medical treatment, etc. Many folks get somewhere through this list, find it’s enough, and stop there. In my experience, everybody wants to be that person who can wear different clothing and get a new haircut and be fine. We are all hoping that a new therapist or a new partner will make it all make sense, and we won’t have to “fully” transition. This is the boat I was in for the 5+ years that I tried every single day to find a way to survive in this world without changing my body.
But some of us try everything, spend years trying to make it all work, and find that, in the end, the only thing left to try to relieve the horrible pain is medical, social and legal transition (whether to a binary or nonbinary gender). We are a tiny minority. We make this choice with anxiety and heartache. We make this choice after exhausting all other avenues. We make this choice because we have the audacity to want a life where we don’t wake up every morning wanting to die.
Politics versus human life. My politics is a politics of human dignity, love, community and survival. My politics is a politics of life and respect. When my politics appear to conflict with human life, when my politics sacrifice the lives and welfare of some people on the altar of ideology, my politics are wrong.
In my tradition, the highest commandment is to save a life. All other rules and regulations can be bypassed to save a life, and to adhere to a lesser law instead of saving a life is an egregious ethical violation. So long as it does not infringe on the rights of any other person, there should be no limits on the actions a person deems necessary to save or dramatically improve their life.
I fail to see how any transition procedure, from a name change to a haircut to hormones to surgery, infringes in any way on the rights of any other person. Therefore, in my ethical framework, if any transition step is needed to save or dramatically improve a person’s life, it is not just permitted but strongly encouraged.
Today I Am A Man 
I am so glad you exist in this world Rimonim.
Very kind of you to say, my friend!
The first person I ever knew to be trans was a friend who did in fact make the decision to transition from female to male quite easily at the age of like twenty-one. He had already decided he was going to take hormones and got a letter at his very first counseling appointment. Because of that, I always thought being trans was something obvious that one always knew. Apparently he didn’t really realize he was trans beforehand and it just clicked one day and he made the appointment the next week. Years later my soon-to-be-ex-wife (who was better friends with him than I) told him that I thought I might be trans but she thought I was bipolar, and he immediately knew I was trans because my interaction with him during his transition always stuck out in his mind. I was intensely curious and accepting, which is apparently not in character for a nineteen-year-old boy. Anyway, another great post. Thanks.
it took me 4 decades and lots of pain to finally transition. Wish I had done it sooner but that is wasted energy.
If I could have I would have clicked like 5 +times! You are often the voice for many!
Heh, I’m ready to like your posts after just a few lines, you have a unique way of cutting through a lot of the garbage to expose focal points. Your point about politics is fantastic, if ideology is fixed, then one’s view becomes rigid and eventually destructive. I find that as I lose my own will, the reasons that tell me I can’t transition anymore are the same reasons that I can’t not transition. With choice taken out of the equation, we can either punish ourselves in denials and self-loathing or allow ourselves to live unsafely in a world of unknowns. Thank you as always!
Thank you, as always, for your kind and thoughtful words! I look forward to your comments; you always put a smile on my face.