The Long Road

The act of coming out to me was fairly simple; it was a matter of acknowledging what I had been feeling for more than 35 years.  It was also a way of putting two and two together, finding a common thread in all my dysphoria, understanding why things were the way they were in my life, and so on.  But the difficulties I've faced since then have a lot to do with our culture, the history of our Western society, and the enforced binarism of cis privilege.

We as gender non-conforming, transgender, non-binary, and genderfluid/queer people existed long before the 21st century.  Humans have a beautiful thing called gender, and it's hard for me to understand why so many people still believe there are just two.  Variation is part of life, is it not? So because gender is such a variable thing from person to person, it's fair to say, at least in my view, that my trans identity is as old as humanity itself.

I think it's becoming clear that a child will navigate themselves towards their identified gender regardless of their birth-assigned gender, if given the vocabulary, support, freedom, and medical help to do it.  A child telling their parents and the wider world what their gender is, as opposed to the other way round, should be as natural in their development as learning to walk, talk, and using the potty. The increasing number of children identifying as other than their birth gender is evidence of this.  But tragically our society hasn't shifted and adapted to this fundamental, beautiful part of human nature.

It shouldn't take time.  That's not something we should have to passively accept.