The Journey So Far...

"But you never showed any signs!" This is often the first refrain trans people hear from those nearest and dearest to us who want to invalidate our truth and prevent our transition.  This statement closely dovetails into the idea that only those who were strongly aligned to their actual gender from an early age and loudly and persistently clung to that assertion despite any influence to stay our birth assigned sex are allowed to transition.  It says, that if we never were seen making any assertions, or even acting with any gender divergent behaviors, then we really can't be transgender.   I have already spoken about how there is no one narrative, or one way to be transgender, and told much of my own story.  I am now going to delve more into the insidious problem of the the so-called-signs. The foremost problem with this idea is the fact of confirmation bias.  Most people fail to see facts that don't fit into the worldview they have built for themselves.  W

This is going to be a delicate subject.   As a result, I wish to place a disclaimer first.   These views are my own and I don’t profess to be right on any of it.   I am just speaking of opinion that I have formed from my experience.   I do not invalidate the experiences of others when I speak of mine.   That is neither my intention nor my desire.   I do wish and welcome a dialog on this topic from people with different experiences so that we all may come to some kind of truth together.   The hope is that, through this conversation, we can make a better culture for us all. Secondly, we need a working definition.   I say working definition because the dictionary definition of privilege is inadequate for this discussion, not nuanced for what we are talking about.   I checked the urban dictionary, but quite a few of those articles were written by edgelords and trolls so they wouldn’t be helpful either.   So, for the purposes of this discussion, here is my definition: Privilege is