Please Don’t Be Gender Ignorant
Establishing some basic facts
When you awoke this morning, was one of the first thoughts you had: “What is my gender?”
Did you lay in bed last night asking yourself the same question? How about various times during the day? How about a week ago, last March, two years ago? Has it been a question on your mind all your life?
If you don’t, the question is obviously not critical, but if you do it clearly is.
Before we go forward, we need to establish some basic facts.
First, I am not a mental health professional or medical doctor. I am just transgender and this is what I have learned so far.
Second, it is important to understand the difference between gender and sex. Gender is how your brain was wired before birth. Your sex is the biological genitalia that you were born with. If you feel they both feel right for you, then you are cisgender. Your gender and sex are in alignment. On the other hand, if you feel they don’t match, then you are part of a minority of people suffering from a gender incongruence. You may, in fact, be transgender.
If you are cisgender, the only importance of reading this further would be for educational purposes. If you feel a sense of conflict between your gender and your sex, it may be important for you to seek professional help to understand what you are dealing with. Seek emergency help if you have suicidal thoughts. Make an appointment to see a doctor or professional gender therapist if your gender concerns cause you to suffer from depression or if you feel a sense hopeless, worthless, or guilt, also if you have questions or concerns about your mental health.
As a cisgender individual, on the other hand, you need to understand that people who are transgender are so because of a random act of nature, like being left-handed or having red hair. It is not a chosen life style; it is a physical reality. It is also is a painful social burden for those who are transgender because, society in its ignorance, blames people who are transgender for who they are. You need to understand that this lack understanding forces a transgender person to hide who they are to avoid ridicule, shame and rejection by family, friends and the community around them.
You need to understand that this pain that society causes comes from a lack understanding, your lack of understanding, and whether you are willing to understand the reality of being transgender. Until then, you will continue to be part of a societal ignorance that destroys innocent lives. More than 50% of people who are left-handed or have red hair don’t attempt suicide, more than 50% who are transgender, do.
To be transgender is massively misunderstood by the majority of the population. They confuse the medical reality of gender incongruence with a mental disorder. It is not. There is sufficient clinical proof that the American Medical Society and the American Psychiatric Association both agree that it is a medical condition. As such, there are medical solutions to the pain that gender incongruence creates.
That pain is called gender dysphoria.
Gender dysphoria is the psychological distress that results from an incongruence between one’s sex assigned at birth and one’s gender identity. It is an alarm bell that can get louder as you get older. It is telling you something is wrong that you need to deal with. The intensity of gender dysphoria is different from one person to the next. Like a back pain, a tooth ache or the pain of any other physical injury, treatment depends on the specific needs of the individual. If it is significant, it should be treated by a professional.
It is hard to gauge the pain of gender dysphoria. There is no thermometer, blood pressure machine or MRI that can measure it. There is no brain scan that can locate the source of the pain and there is no known surgical solution or medication that can alleviate the pain.
The only know solution is for a transgender person to find the expression of their gender they can live in peace with. That answer is, in many ways, dictated by the level of rejection or acceptance by family and friends of the local community to being transgender and the financial or public resources available to the individual for the professional and medical solutions to their particular needs.
The level of rejection and the lack of resources both can contribute to the high level of attempted suicide by individuals who are transgender.
This has to stop.
Ignorance is not acceptable if someone’s life is at stake. We don’t burn witches anymore and we don’t torture people for their religious beliefs. No one chooses their gender. A body is just a physical wrapper around the soul of person. If you lose your legs or your arms are you any less a person? If I change my physical presentation to match my gender am I any less a person?
Once you make an effort to understand, its just common sense. Acceptance should follow naturally.
Please make the effort. Ignorance should not be your excuse.
You are better than that.
Emma Holiday
Writers note: If you have read any of my writings on Medium you will have noticed a definite theme: the incredible pain of gender dysphoria and all the difficult aspects of just being transgender.
My writing has three specific goals:
1. Writing is my therapy. I have a very limited outlet for my thoughts so I write to find a way to process the most profound experience in my life. I need to understand and I need to accept myself to move forward.
2. Being transgender, for me, is a very lonely existence and if I can share some of the things that I feel and think as I go through the process of transitioning with others who are transgender and, in some way, lessen their pain and sense of loneliness, then all of this public exposure of my personal thoughts is not a waste.
3. I write to help cisgender people understand that all trans people want is to be simply understood, accepted and treated as a normal person. We are.
Thank you for reading my work.
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