I’m Trans, and I Don’t Care If We Were ‘Born This Way’
Last week marked seven years since Lady Gaga released her third album, Born This Way. The lead single of the same name was intended to be a totemic anthem for her large LGBTQ fanbase. As she clumsily put it: “No matter gay, straight or bi, lesbian, transgendered life: I’m on the right track, I was born to survive.”
But Gaga’s modern queer hymn was arguably a misstep: its title and central message tried to sell her millennial fans confidence on the basis of a divinely bestowed identity, when it is fluidity, in both sexuality and gender, that has been the emerging hallmark of that generation.
Yet, the “born this way” narrative continues to offer solace to some. Last week, a study released in Belgium suggested that trans people’s brains – including those of trans children – more closely matched those belonging to other members of the gender they identified with than with members of the gender associated with their sex at birth.
Commentators, who are not scientists, tend to be overeager in drawing their own conclusions from complex studies, and this was no exception. Soon the tentative research was alleged to have revealed that “a brain scan can reveal someone’s true gender”, and that “trans people were born that way”.
But this isn’t quite what was found. For my own part, I am often surprised and infuriated by accusations that because I am a trans woman I am the proponent of an ideology or agenda that believes in “pink and blue brains”, or in an innate gender identity that stands independent of society and culture. I believe no such thing, and share with fellow feminists a refusal to entertain the dangerous idea that the oppression of women and queer people has a natural basis rather than being a socially engineered phenomenon.
For example, there aren’t enough women in tech because stereotypes and presumptions work to dissuade women from working in the field. Similarly, most violent crime is committed by men not because men are inherently violent, but because masculinity is a cultural ideal that can encourage and even reward aggression and violence.
In fact, the study released last week seems, on closer inspection, to suggest something closer to my own perspective: neuroplasticity. The brain itself is malleable, and the way it develops is determined by an interaction of how we interpret ourselves and how others treat us. It may well be that our brains learn to develop certain patterns of function in line with the gendered expectations and norms of the world around us. In other words: the biological basis of identity and selfhood is as complicated and rich as the diversity of every human being who walks this planet. Who knew?
I know trans people who disagree, and believe gender identity is innate. I respectfully disagree. That’s the key word here: respect. Call me a radical, but what does it matter where your profound sense of self comes from? I don’t care if I was born trans or became trans. “Transgender” itself is a largely western, 20th-century way to consider gender variance, and covers a huge spectrum. What matters is whether being openly trans in our society can still provide opportunity for a life filled with joy, or dooms you to one saturated in misery.
There is an allure to believing your gender identity to be an immutable quality you’re born with. At the age of 11, I began to be taunted most days for walking and talking “like a girl” or “like a gay”. Suggestions that I had a choice in the matter felt like victim-blaming. At 30, I am still told most days on social media that I’ve chosen to be trans for attention, because I’m a confused gay man, because I’m mad or because I’m sexually deviant.
In the face of such hostility, the demand that you constantly justify yourself becomes exhausting. In my experience, some people will just leave you alone if placated with the notion that being trans (or any other LGBTQ identity for that matter) is an unfortunate curse to befall you, not something you would have ever chosen to inflict on them so selfishly. Yet as you satisfy one bigot, you arouse the useless anger of another. This is, ultimately, depressing: less a positive assertion of self, more an intimidated negotiation with the oppressor.
Then there are trans kids and dysphoria. We are living in a time in which people who have never lived with the agony of gender dysphoria pontificate and trade in alarmist generalisations about why children and their families may seek medical treatment. The ulterior motive of much of this commentary seems to be a refusal of basic acceptance of trans people, let alone material and political support.
In response, there’s a reactive pressure for parents and advocates who fear trans children will be stigmatised further to engage with hypotheses about why children experience such feelings so strongly. They shouldn’t have to do this. Trans healthcare for young people is decided upon as it should be: on a case-by-case basis, attentive to the voice of the human being at the centre, those who know them best, and professionals.
Adults, by contrast, ought to have utter autonomy over their personhood and their bodies. I call myself a trans woman as an expression of this autonomy. “Trans” and “woman” are the broad terms and conceptions of gender available to best describe myself in the time and culture in which I live. Neither tells you everything because gender is a reductive thing, which always curbs individuality. Yet inhabiting that space, by describing myself in that way, and using female pronouns and using oestrogen to feminise my appearance, makes my life liveable. Again, I can’t tell you why. You can scan my brain, but I’d suggest it’s more helpful to stand with me in the face of prejudice and ignorance. You don’t have to know every murmur of my soul. Obsessing over every detail of your identity is for your therapist’s office, or late night tweets, but politics ought to be about actions.
Don’t worry about the “why”; act on the “what”. What does being a trans person in a transphobic society produce? At the moment, too often, it’s still violence, prejudice and discrimination. Lady Gaga told trans people we “were born to survive”. On the contrary, it seems that for better or worse our survival is dependent on the support and solidarity of others. So will you offer us yours?