#transgender101

I thought I'd put this here as my second post just in case you read my first one and were massively confused. It would be nice if this wasn't necessary, if we could tell a coming out story about being trans as easily as we could one about being gay.

Sadly, people don't really get what trans people are. It's not necessarily their fault - it's just that they don't hear about trans people, or if they do, it's misinformation. They see them in porn, or hear about them on the news as a shocking headline. They don't understand why trans people are the way they are.

A transsexual person is someone who identifies as a different gender to the one they were assigned at birth. When they were born, the doctor exclaimed "it's a boy!" and they were raised a boy and given trucks as toys, until many years later they said one day "actually, I think I'm a girl." They don't know why this is the case, but it feels right. This example is of a trans girl, or trans woman. Her body is male, but her mind is telling her that she is a woman.

Because of this many transsexual people transition. They take steps to change their physical body to match their brain sex. This is achieved mainly through hormone therapy. A trans man, for example, would go on blockers for female hormones and take testosterone. This replicates the hormone levels found in most men.

Alongside a physical transition many trans people talk about a 'social transition'. Social behaviors, mannerisms, and manner of speech are all highly gendered, as trans people are aware more than anyone. 

The early stages of transition can bring a lot of stigma for trans people. So why transition? The brain sex of a trans person will make itself known through gender dysphoria. For a trans girl, having the body of a boy is uncomfortable. Dysphoria can be so painful that many suffer anxiety and depression, or worse. Transitioning is not so much something that trans people fancy doing, as something they do for their survival.

If you've read this far, odds are you're a cis person. Cisgendered people were assigned a gender at birth that matches their brain sex. This is a useful term to have, because it stops the need for terms such as 'natural born woman'. Trans women are also natural born women - many theorise that birth sex is decided in the womb. Trans women are only as natural as cis women.