Transgender Struggles, Self-Identification, and Becoming Who You Are

I am reading more and more about transgender people and their transitioning. It's of interest to me for a few reasons. I've known a friend who did it, and there was a professor at grad school who transitioned.

I've always felt that in any change, the before-state is usually sustainable, the after-state is usually sustainable, but it's the transition where all the chaos and pain happen. People who are adversely affected by a poorly managed change usually get hurt in the transition from before to after

What I find remarkable is the significant pain and difficulty these people go through voluntarily. Nobody initiates or endures this process on a whim, whether they choose to dress and present differently, or choose a hormonal transition or even a complete surgical change. I think the plumbing doesn't matter. It seems to me the folx must be under great duress to embark on such an adventure of self-identification.

And in pursuing self-identification, aren't they really pursuing the goals that we're all supposed to be chasing? How to be themselves? How to be true to themselves? How to avoid wearing a false mask for the world, how to not live in a self-imposed closet? How to choose to be the individual that they see themselves as?

I am not transgender but I have such respect for people who are. What they put up with, in terms of resistance of change from families, workplaces, religions, and all sorts of organizations. Families and friends want you to stay the way they met you; they don't want you to change. The ugliness that Trans people receive from the Deplorables. The risks of violence. The wondering whether this trip to the rest room will be the one that goes awry. The fear of being in a too-crowded club, too late in the evening, and facing a beating or worse in the street. The fear of bring pulled over on a pretext stop and placed in a prison holding cell according to the binary gender stamp on a driver's license. The dehumanizing when a parent tells a child to avert their glance and not look at you.

And yet these folx pursue their vision of who they really are, and - in a society with civil rights - who are "we", who are the medically uninformed majority (if indeed it is a majority) to tell them otherwise?

Why would we want to force somebody to remain within the gender social-construct they were assigned at birth? And what's so sacred about birth status anyway? We have all sorts of medical procedures to correct undesirable birth attributes, why not handle this as another glitch?

Of course, a portion of gender dysphoria happens at a young age and in some corners of the Deplorables there are fears of activists pursuading youth to act against their insticts and to choose a path that's not best for them, or at least is not what their parents want for them.

If we were really concerned about recruiters targeting our youth for non-optimal lifestyles, we would ban military recruiters and religious prosletizers from our tender youth. No more giving Army recuiters detailed lists of student identities. No more holding assemblies so evangelists can attempt to entice children that they're going to hellfire if they don't joint the cult.

I am myself a person who is struggling against previous identity, the bonds of previous relationships and previous roles in order to become the me who my mind (whatever that is) tells me is truly me. I feel at times like Gulliver, a traveller bound by hundreds of lesser claimants upon my freedom, who would return me to some second-class status which would make them all feel more comfortable.

I'm reminded of Michaelangelo who was asked, how does he carve a bull from a block of stone? He said, chip away at everything that isn't a bull; polish everything which is a bull, and you'll end up with a statue of a magnificent bull. I'm trying to chip away at everything that isn't me. I've got a lot of accrued stuff to chip away at.

But I've started. Recently I met a man I hadn't seen in over a year and he didn't recognize me. I took that as progress.