Fast forward…

In the year 2315, an archeologist explores the remnants of a hilltop home 50 kilometers southwest of the spaceport of Minneapolis.  To her delight, she spies an undamaged safe buried within the mound of rotten wood, broken glass and plastic water bottles.    Her sonic screwdriver makes short work of the rudimentary lock, and within seconds she holds a fading document.  It is a birth certificate, which declares that Renae Gage, female, was born in San Diego County at 10:45 PM on the 12th of January, nearly 350 years ago.  30 meters away, she discovers a shallow grave marked with the same name.  A bit of digging uncovers skeletal remains.  A wave of curiosity crosses her face.  She examines the pelvis.  No doubt about it–male.

How might our archeologist make sense of seemingly contradictory information?  She knows that bones don’t lie¹, but then again, neither do birth certificates.  Do gravestones?  Perhaps she has found the wrong body.  Or, maybe someone altered the vital records.  In either case, the story is starting to get really interesting…

We face the same question in 2015.  “Who is this person in front of me?”  Those who would advise the archeologist to trust the bones see little mystery.  Gender, in their view, is identical to sex and fixed at birth.  Oddly enough, those who would advise the archeologist to trust the birth certificate  are starting to sing the same refrain–they claim that I was born this way.

I am not sure about that.  I wasn’t present at my birth, where “I” equals my conscious self.  I vaguely recall once either thinking or saying “I am three” while descending into the basement of the house where I lived at the time.  If memory serves at all, the stairs were oriented such that the back yard would have been to my left as I went down.²  That’s as far as I go back.

I personally find it difficult to think of myself as being born as one gender or the other.  What does it mean to speak about my core identity three years before a time when I may or may not remember which way it was to the back yard?  At some point I developed awareness that I was a boy because my parents told me I was, dressed me like one and sent me outside to play with others.  And, to be clear, this almost always works out just fine.  I don’t recall questioning it, but if I did, the answers given almost certainly had something to do with how I peed.

I plead ignorance about how my trans identity came to be.  I spent many years denying that it existed.  By the time I had to admit to myself that it did, I was already pretty far removed from the facts of the matter.  Before I gathered the courage to express my identity, I was further removed still.  I don’t know if I was born this way, and I am even less sure how much it matters.

Personally, I think it is a metaphor.  By this I don’t mean to say that those who use it are either wrong or dishonest.  Again, I claim expertise only on my own story.  Others may have more vivid memories of the early years that are nothing more than a blur to me.  However, I just don’t think about either gender or infancy in that way.  What was my identity when I could do no more than eat, poop and smile?

Language is thoroughly metaphorical.  You feel “up” today, but Sally feels “down”.   We have no difficulty at all grasping how Katrina feels when she is “walking on sunshine”.  Those of us in midlife nod empathetically  when Bruce Cockburn “paces the cage“.  These words are true without being factual.    It may or may not be that our gender is fixed at birth–I genuinely don’t know–but the words are true enough for the person who speaks them.  Here are some reasons why I think those particular words might be so common in the personal narratives of trans persons:

Sometimes gender variance really does show up in the nursery.  Nicole Maines, who recently won a civil rights law suit against her school district because she was denied use of the girl’s restroom, clearly expressed female identity at age two.  Her story is particularly interesting because she has an identical twin brother who is not transgender.  Their joint experience undercuts the notion that gender is genetically determined–their DNA is also identical.  Further, photos of the siblings together demonstrate how effective hormonal therapy can be if initiated before the onset of puberty.

People like Nicole prove to my satisfaction that transgender identity is real.  Given the shame and doubt that transpeople regularly experience, she is a welcome source of inspiration.  Still, I wonder how much her experience helps to explain what I see more commonly–people coming out in early, middle and even late adulthood.  Are Nicole and I the same sort of creature?  If not, how much can I really apply from the apparent success of her transition?

People more readily accept trans identity in children.  Few people seriously doubt Nicole’s story.  On the other hand, when I read about Chelsea Manning transitioning in the midst of legal trouble, or Bruce Jenner coming out after years as a professional media hound, part of me wants to ask , “What the hell are they up to now?”³  Adults who transition get routinely cast as nut cases or perverts.  Indeed, many of us shame ourselves in this way as we try to figure out who we are.  There might be a social and psychological incentive to the “born this way” narrative.  It asserts that our identities were forged in an age of innocence.

Gender feels inevitable.  I can recall what I now recognize as transgender feelings as early as 9 or 10 despite the fact that memories of that era have grown vague and sparse.  These feelings multiplied through adolescence and still more so throughout adulthood.  Even if I can’t see all the way back to the cradle, the general impression that something set itself in motion from the beginning seems plausible.

Duration imparts credibility.  A 300 year old building often impresses us more than a brand new one, even if the latter is more functional.  The first objection a transperson encounters is, “You were never like this before.”  This is untrue.  None of us would go through the disruption of gender transition unless we were tapping into something real and long-lasting.  Coming out is not for wimps.  On the other hand, given the tendency of society to doubt the validity of our identity, might it not be tempting to overemphasize  early awareness when we tell our stories?

There is no morality where there is no choice.  The dominant paradigm throughout human history held that LGBT people are morally deficient, having opted against normal, healthy and righteous behavior.  This alleged deviancy has been used to justify horrible discrimination and violence against our community.  Seeing transgender identity as fixed at birth is one way of diffusing this prejudice.

I don’t think it is the only way.  It might well prove true that we have no choice whatsoever in our gender identity.  But what if this is not the case?  I am open to the idea that factors operating later than birth, including choices on my part, might have played a role in my identity formation.  However, I also recognize that whatever input I had into the process occurred at such a tender age as to make moral condemnation meaningless.  Further, I understand that any lack of understanding I might have about how I came to be transgender pales in comparison to the demonstrated historical ignorance of those who insist that the root cause is sin.

_{¹  Actually, bones lie almost as well as sleeping dogs if you let them.}

_{²    I would be interested in finding out if this is correct, because that would prove…well, nothing actually.}

_{³  In the end though, I choose to believe in what they are doing until or unless it is utterly unbelievable.  It’s a hard road to walk even for the best of reasons, and I am very much living in a metaphorical glass house on this one.}