Recently, someone commented on my Trans is Trendy post calling me an ignorant cunt. I admit the vitriol shocked me since someone who is trans read it over it for me to make sure I wasn’t unintentionally being an asshole and she was okay with it. The only way I know to clarify the post is provide the situations which triggered me to think deeply on the matter enough I wrote about it. There were 2 this summer. Before I start though, I feel you should know I don’t consider LGBTQ+ weird, horrible, or a choice. I consider it a biological determinate. I did not wake up on the morning of my first menustral cycle and decide I was going to find boys sexually attractive. It just happened. Since my body didn’t give me a choice in my sexual orientation, I don’t believe anyone else’s body is giving them the choice. I find the suggestion that sexual orientation or gender identity are choices we can make is absurd.
Situation 1: In March, I was messaged by someone claiming we went to high school together. I didn’t recognize their name, but their face looked sort of familiar. She and I get to talking and she tells me, I probably remember her as Robert. Ah, okay…. yes, I remember you. We’d always been friendlier than acquaintances, but not so friendly we were having sleepovers at each other’s houses. She tells me some years ago, she underwent gender reassignment surgery, which was why she struggled to come out of her shell in high school, which hey, I totally get. If you aren’t comfortable in your own body, it’s hard to make friends. She and I rekindle our slightly more than acquaintanceship and begin talking fairly regularly because her mom died of kidney failure almost twenty years ago and someone mentioned to her, my mom had suffered kidney failure and she reached out. In July she mentions her sibling’s teenager just came out as Trans and it was a little odd, because by the end of the week Teenager 1’s (sibling’s teenager), two closest friends also came out as Trans. All three have the potential to be trans, I won’t argue that, but the timing for all three seems convenient. Now, they could have all come out at once because there’s safety in numbers and maybe being “different” was the reason they were drawn together… but then I was given more information about a different situation.
Situation 2: Several years ago, my friend informed me a friend of her’ was having trouble because the friend’s teenager came out as Trans… as did a couple of friends. So in one summer, I’ve run across this twice with very different teenagers. As a society, we have not suddenly become more receptive to people being trans, which is why I find it odd two different groups of teenagers all came out as trans together, as if… it’s as if my teen years are being repeated, but with a different form of sexual expression.
In the 1990s, the teenagers of my era were coming out as bisexual in droves. I don’t think a single girl in my high school was “heterosexual,” they were all bisexual… at least for a while. By the time we graduated high school, most of them had given up the bisexual label and gone heterosexual. For us, it was exploration of our sexual orientation and sexual identity which all teenagers explore in different ways and as an added bonus we got to piss off and freak out the adults in our lives. For our parents that exploration was expressed during the late 1960s and 1970s as free love. But my generation was definitely the decade when being bisexual became trendy… even if you weren’t, you claimed you were because that was what the cool kids were doing.
However, I see problems with this scrambling to be trans. There are a lot of people who fear/hate trans people way more than they hate gays and bisexuals. So for me, I worry that in 5 years or 10 years when all these teenagers who came out as trans realize they aren’t and “stop,” it’s going to reinforce the ridiculous idea that gender identity is a choice… which will lead to even more hate/fear and rejection of the Trans community. Because all those haters will look at the Trans community and be like “I knew a girl who thought she was a guy, but she grew out of it. If you want to be accepted, don’t be trans.”
And that is a terrible thing. I know some part of the teenage community who are coming out as trans, are indeed trans, and I hope their family and friends support and love them. But for those who aren’t trans, but claim to be because it pisses off and freaks out the adults while providing support to their friends, may unwittingly be doing harm… and that worries me.