Looking back at my childhood in the 90s, I can remember a time when casual homophobia was an accepted staple of comedy, when “gay” or “bög” (I’m Swedish) were insults, and when being LGBT was still considered shameful. Cultural shifts move like glaciers, and little by little, these attitudes changed over the years. But sometimes the glacier cracks, and a torrent of rapid change bursts out of it. In 2011, 0.3% of the US identified as transgender. 11 years later, Pew Research shows that trans and non-binary combined for 1.6% of US adults. What’s more, an astounding 5.1% of young adults now identify with a gender different from that associated with their sex. Given this explosive growth, it’s fair to have some questions. For one, what’s causing this? Are all of these gender-nonconforming people trans as such? Or do we perhaps need a better way to describe what’s going on here?

Some trans activists argue that this sharp increase comes down to greater acceptance and less bigotry — that there are no more trans people today than there were in 2011, and it’s simply that people today now feel freer to express their identities. The data on growing acceptance is mixed, and with how drastically these divides fall along political lines, one wonders how much of this is an expression of social trends and ideologies.

There have always been gay, lesbian, and bi people across the political spectrum, but of the more than 2.5 million non-binary adults in the US, you’d be hard-pressed to fill a single high school gymnasium with the number of they/thems who identify as politically right-wing. How much of this phenomenon is just ordinary “feminine” men, “masculine” women, or anyone else who does not fit into traditional gender roles? How much of it is finding a sense of belonging and maybe a bit of social clout? My own journey as a gender-nonconforming person has convinced me that we must find a less confused and charged way of discussing trans and gender-nonconforming people.

Over a decade ago, my mother and her partner befriended a trans man. It was the first time I’d ever met someone who was trans. He was a friendly, regular, real person, nothing at all like the one-dimensional caricatures I had seen in comedic media portrayals. This experience was what first got me asking questions about gender — questions that I still cannot satisfyingly answer all these years later.

Until my late twenties, I assumed I was just another boring heterosexual male. However, diving into trans discourse when it was taking off around 2016 had me questioning the things I took for granted. Was I really a man, just because of my anatomy and testosterone levels? I quickly concluded that none of the traditional masculine tropes applied or meant anything to me — excessive self-confidence, assertiveness, storied sexual conquests, sports, cars, or drinking beer with the boys. What does “being a man” even mean to me? Everything that makes me who I am comes down to factors entirely unrelated to gender stereotypes.

The question never left my mind. I could not banish the thought — if I’m not an ordinary cis male, what am I exactly? It became more than just a curiosity, and I needed answers. When I broached the subject with my brother, whose input I value more than almost anyone’s, he was quite dismissive. I said I was considering contacting online trans communities for feedback, and he told me that if I wanted to find out if I was unwell in some way, I should seek professional help, not the opinions of laymen. While I understood his point, surely trans people themselves could relate to some of my feelings and at least point me in the right direction. So I reached out to trans communities online to ask the question: if I lack gender dysphoria and have no desire to transition, but nevertheless feel no attachment to the gender associated with my sex — am I trans, or something else?

The answers were vexingly contradictory. Many proclaimed that since trans includes anyone who falls outside the circle of those whose gender identity directly corresponds with their sex, then I would, by definition, be trans. Others insisted on stronger criteria, such as discomfort with one’s own body, or feeling like there’s something wrong with your sex characteristics — that simply being nonconforming (and in my case, also apathetic) towards gender would not make you truly trans, but adjacent at most. Imagine somebody like me, as mildly affected by my gender as you possibly could be, comfortable passing as a man, never once having to deal with the added stress of dysphoria and bigotry, experiencing this level of confusion and frustration. Now imagine what it must feel like for those who truly do feel severe angst about their gender identity.

The label I ended up settling on was a loose type of non-binary. I was clearly not a trans woman, but neither did I have any attachment or investment in being a “man.” I was introduced to the concept of agender, a non-binary variant describing those who feel a neutral disposition towards their own gender. Autistic as I am, the ability to formally categorize and explain a part of me felt comforting, but it always left a bad taste in my mouth. The more I thought about it, the less certain I felt. I would never introduce myself as trans. It would feel rude, as though I’m doing it for attention. I will never have to face harassment or slurs for looking different. I’ll never experience acute anxiety just from glancing at my reflection and feeling like my body is wrong. To lump whatever I have going on with that feels neither accurate nor appropriate. I don’t want that status. I’ve spent my life not wanting to be autistic, not looking to stand out, and I am all too aware of the hazards of identitarianism.

Does every quirk and feature of the human experience warrant its own identity category? All of this comes back to how bewildering the entire discussion seems to the average person. Steeped in a kind of esoteric postmodern jargon — with convoluted concepts like neopronouns, demigender, and pangender — that you’d need a Ph.D. in transquantum hermeneutics to decipher, the discourse is dominated by a brand of activism that would have you believe gender is at once both a socially constructed fiction, while also being an all-important paradigm that completely overrides and negates biological sex. How sure can you be in such murky waters? This appears to be the goal of ideologies such as Critical Queer Theory, which seeks to complicate concepts and raze categories until clear communication becomes impossible, thereby upending The System [of oppression].

Without the social norms older generations were raised on, I’m left wondering, what even is gender? Sure, “gender identity is separate from biological sex” is easy enough to understand, but it doesn't really explain what gender actually is. No matter how many labels and subcategories we create, the trans umbrella seems destined to subsume everything. Eventually, it seems, everyone will qualify for some degree of transgenderism, because nobody conforms exactly to gender norms — most of which are arbitrary and culturally defined to begin with. Unlike queerness, which can be understood to speak to something universal in humanity, “transgender” is a highly specific concept designed to describe a highly specific phenomenon. If everyone is trans, nobody is. The concept ceases to have meaning. For Critical Theorists, this distinction must be collapsed along with all other categories. Tearing down structures is their panacea, because they imagine that out of the ashes of the ensuing epistemic chaos, something better will rise.

What if instead, we broadened our understanding of what being a man or a woman means, as opposed to confining it to gender stereotypes or a million different shades of transness? What if we embraced a more liberal view of gender, a view once progressive but now strangely out of fashion, that while gender dysphoria and trans are real, a man doesn’t have to be masculine to be a man, nor does a woman have to be feminine? What if we accepted boys who play with dolls, or girls who build tree forts, instead of supposing or even insisting that they must be some other gender? Of course, some folks will claim this is already the case, that radical trans activism doesn’t undermine this notion. But that could only be true of a school of thought that doesn’t try to erase biological sex or lean too deeply into gender stereotypes — two things that the more ascendent postmodern conception of trans constantly does. This ideology is a mile wide but an inch deep. The fact that many activists cannot coherently articulate the difference between men and women without retreating behind the cop-out of “whatever any given person says they feel like” demonstrates that.

In just the past seven years, mainstream Western society has been abruptly made aware of trans issues, seeing their preconceived notions — common attitudes that were in no way considered offensive before 2015 — quickly declared wrong, bigoted, hateful, and even genocidal. This is not to say the rapid shift was itself a bad thing — trans awareness and support are good. But this almost overnight transition also led to the issue being inflamed. Such a drastic sea change would never come easily or without serious tensions. We see this reflected in an increasingly polarized debate where one extreme regards trans people as either mental patients or perverts, while the other demands blind submission to every new doctrine of queer theory. Add to that the fact that the most radical elements of the political left have appropriated most of the LGBT movement, and the backlash was predictable, wasn’t it? Trans people and trans rights are not the problem. The cadre of radical ideologues presuming to speak on their behalf is.

If you are, like me, questioning your own gender identity, you’ll be met with a mix of extremist ideologues, terminal Twitter addicts, radical feminists, and Matt Walsh clones — a shotgun blast of contradictory information and grandiose claims, one more catastrophic than the next. The conversation must be wrested from the hands of extremists. In order for people to accept the legitimacy of trans identity in the long term, forcing them at metaphorical gunpoint won’t work — their minds will have to be changed. To do that, the most insane viewpoints must be outcompeted and refuted.

We must instead bring philosophically liberal values to the forefront of the discourse — openness, reason, and a plurality of ideas. Trans acceptance, yes, and also with the freedom to question — where hearing out opposing viewpoints is a respected norm. To even have discussions this nuanced, messy, and subjective, an open dialogue is needed, a space where diversity of thought — not the dogmatism and relentless authoritarianism of the most zealous activists — stands firm. A space where people can test ideas, think out loud, and maybe even be ignorant or mistaken at some point without having their careers and reputations destroyed for any misstep.

I continue to wrestle with my gender identity. I may never find the perfect concept that captures exactly how I feel — and maybe that’s okay. What I do know is that people need the space to explore these things, whether it’s their own identities or the broader political issues surrounding them. We’re still figuring out trans issues. Much is left to be discussed, debated, resolved, and yes, compromised on. If we don’t allow for those growing pains, if we instead demand total dogmatic obeisance to the dictates of activists, we will be handing the enemies of LGBT rights powerful ammunition.

Published Oct 5, 2022
Updated Feb 5, 2024