Dear Janus:

I read your two recent posts very slowly this Sunday morning and today I have a better understanding of what gender identity  means than I ever did before (I’ll get to it later in this post). When I read your posts in the 87 page of thread over the years, in my mind, I was reading the accounts of a young person’s struggles with significant mental health issues that were getting- over the years and while you were identifying as a transgender- worse, not better. So in my mind, I connected being transgender with mental illness.

Here is a bit to show how your mental health issues were getting worse: In 2016, you were “limiting junk food like cookies“. In 2017, you “would work out to the extreme and eat little for days to burn off the calories“. In 2018, you were “scared of anorexia, but.. more scared of not.. looking masculine“. In 2019, you were “working out intensely and following a strict diet and being anorexic“.  In 2020, you were “having muscle aches and pains… a sharp jabbing ache in my hip bone… soreness from running… sharp jabs of pain.. from my full binder that I use to bind my chest and hips… panic attacks… work out a lot until I start to see shadows in my vision… stomach cramps and chills, and still feeling dizzy“, and with all your awareness of gender identity and being helped by the LGBTIQ community’s resources, including a gender therapist, your “gender dysphoria has been getting more intense” (Feb 2020), and you were “lost in gender dysphoria and anxiety” (June 1, 2020).

And so, I figured that you were not well served by the LGBTQ community because your most serious issue was mental health. Today, Aug 21, 2022, having read your two posts from yesterday, I see that you made a lot of progress during your July 2020- July 2022 break from your thread:

You wrote yesterday: “I had long held toxic masculinity beliefs that I had to be strong, athletic to be a guy… I fell for an idealized version of what it feels like to be a guy…  I realize that guys don’t have to be muscular or strong, they can cry… Throw(ing) my health away to fit into what I felt was toxic masculinity wasn’t great. Being trans is about living in myself, being authentic, challenging societal boxes that don’t fit my gender identity. I feel like I’ve come quite a long way towards growing and understanding myself and learning to embrace things“-

-this means then that you are no longer hurting your body by putting it through the extremes of (1) calorie restrictions and over-exercising, (2) wearing trans tapes and binders that are so tight that they leave you bruised and sore, right?

If this is the case, I can now look at what gender identity is when significant to severe mental health issues are not in the way. Having read your account of your gender identity related experiences since elementary school, I got a feel for what gender identity means. For example, when you cut your hair short and the mailman called you “sir“, and you felt “elated like something fell into place“- it gave me a feel for what gender identity means. The elation was about the mailman seeing you the way you saw yourself: a guy.

Having read today that you felt like a guy before you were sexually harassed in the 7th grade, led me to understand, for the first time, that your gender identity issue was not the result of being sexually harassed. That sexual harassment in school hurt you so much because, as I understand it, you saw him as a fellow-guy and thought that he too saw you as just another guy, but alas: he saw you as…  a girl.

In the last two years of improving mental health, you understand that to be a guy does not mean to be an athletic and physically strong, so you are not driven to work out as much as you did before so to develop and keep muscles, and you are not driven to keep your body lean by restricting and over-exercising etc.. Your own definition of what it means to be a guy changed, it loosened.

I looked at the National Center for Transgender Equality website. It explains things very clearly. It refers to gender identity as a person’s “innate knowledge” of one’s gender. For some it is male, for others it is female and yet for others, it is “neither male nor female, or.. a combination of male and female“.

“There are a variety of terms that people who aren’t entirely male or entirely female use to describe their gender identity, like non-binary or genderqueer… People can realize that they’re transgender at any age”-

-as a matter of fact, I don’t remember ever feeling comfortable being female. In my own mind, I identified with being a male ever since my early 20s, if not earlier. But I didn’t hate myself (for having been labeled female at birth and onward) as much as you expressed hating yourself. I just didn’t like being female. Most of the time I wore jeans, loose and comfortable clothes and sandals, little to no makeup, no high heels, and I kept my hair very short for many years. I did act girly, did not feel comfortable around women and felt relatively comfortable around men. I suppose I can label myself genderqueer with a tendency toward male. I think that the reason behind my gender identity being way more male than it is female, is that I didn’t like my mother (a woman). She was very dominant and abusive in regard to me. Maybe I wanted to be stronger than her, so to set myself free from her, and so, I identified with the gender considered stronger (male).  You shared that you don’t like your mother. Maybe you wanted since early on to be different from her, and different meant being  guy (?)

Back to the website: “Gender identity and sexual orientation are two different things. Gender identity refers to your internal knowledge of your own gender… Sexual orientation has to do with whom you’re attracted to. Like non-transgender people, transgender people can have any sexual orientation…

“Being gender non-conforming means not conforming to gender stereotypes. For example, someone’s clothes, hairstyle, speech patterns, or hobbies might be considered more ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’ than what’s stereotypically associated with their gender. Gender non-conforming people may or may not be transgender… Similarly, transgender people may be gender non-conforming, or they might conform to gender stereotypes for the gender they live and identify as”-

– I am definitely a gender non-conformist.

“The belief that someone’s gender identity can be changed through therapy runs counter to the overwhelming consensus in the medical community. Telling someone that a core part of who they are is wrong or delusional and forcing them to change it is dangerous, sometimes leading to lasting depression, substance abuse, self-hatred and even suicide. Because of this, a growing number of states have made it illegal for licensed therapists to try to change a young person’s gender identity (laws apply to those under 18)…

“For some transgender people, the difference between the gender they are thought to be at birth and the gender they know themselves to be can lead to serious emotional distress… Gender dysphoria is the medical diagnosis for someone who experiences this distress. Not all transgender people have gender dysphoria… Many transgender people do not experience serious anxiety or stress associated with the difference between their gender identity and their gender of birth, and so may not have gender dysphoria.

“Gender dysphoria can often be relieved by expressing one’s gender in a way that the person is comfortable with. That can include dressing and grooming in a way that reflects who one knows they are, using a different name or pronoun, and, for some, taking medical steps to physically change their body. All major medical organizations in the United States recognize that living according to one’s gender identity is an effective, safe and medically necessary treatment for many people who have gender dysphoria.

“It’s important to remember that while being transgender is not in itself an illness, many transgender people need to deal with physical and mental health problems because of widespread discrimination and stigma. Many transgender people live in a society that tells them that their deeply held identity is wrong or deviant… Many transgender people – especially transgender people who are accepted and valued in their communities – are able to live healthy and fulfilling lives”-

–my thoughts: transgender people, like cisgender people, suffer from all kinds of mental health issues, some that are not related to gender identity. Therefore, it’s important to NOT ASSUME (1) that ALL of a transgender person’s mental health issues are the result of their gender identity issue and related social discrimination, and (2) that all of a person’s mental health issues will be resolved following physical transitioning.

I am guessing that this very topic is explored during the psychotherapy that is prescribed to transgenders as a condition to physical transitioning.  Amazing, Janus. I understand so much more today than I understood yesterday, thank you for your part in teaching me!

anita