The Single Biggest Reason Why You Keep Questioning if You are Transgender!
Do you find yourself constantly wondering if you are transgender? Questioning if gender transition is really for you?
Maybe you have started hormone therapy but wonder if you are truly trans?
Afraid you might make a mistake?!? Regret your choices? Afraid you might ruin your life?!?
I hear these questions and fears all the time. These concerns happen more often for older people—about 35 years of age and up.
And there is a reason for that. As I’ll point out, the older you are, the longer you have been conditioned to “be” in your assumed gender!
But first, let me walk you through how gender has been taught, learned, and reinforced for you throughout your life!
If you think about it, gender is all around you. You are constantly bombarded by gender messages, gender expectations, and gender perceptions.
Everything and I mean everything, in your world is assigned a gender from the moment you are born.
birth certificate
clothes
toys
hairstyles
how do you handle emotions?
behaviors
coping skills
access to resources
Your parents, siblings, caregivers, teachers, and even friends, communicate their expectations of what is appropriate for you based on your external presentation of gender.
Their expectations for you are influenced by their gender and cultural values taught by the same gendered cycle you find yourself in.
Further perpetuating binary stereotypes of gender.
As you grow, people who come into your life continue to model gender expectations for you in very subtle, micro ways, such as:
forms of eye contact
body touch
whether they laughed at your jokes
interruptions during conversation
openness to sharing
tone of voice
Everything around you, including interactions with others, is gendered.
These expectations of your assumed gender are then integrated and internalized by you!
Bringing us to the number one reason why you keep questioning if you are transgender.
GENDER SOCIALIZATION!
As seen above, through social conditioning and by the time you were three years old, you preferred activities and exhibited behaviors typically associated with your assumed gender.
Your parents, siblings, care providers, friends, and everyone around you encouraged you to act within your assumed gender role.
Moreover, you were positively reinforced for displaying your assumed gender role!
And negativity reinforced for displaying any behavior associated with how you truly felt on the inside.
It is this gender socialization from the time you are born that influences what you later consider to be personal preferences.
How you learned and interacted with gender as a child directly influences how you view the world today!
The older you are, the longer you have been conditioned to view the world through your gender lens.
As a result, your inner, authentic sense of who you are in relation to your gender is in ongoing conflict with the neuro-cognitive, detailed, and personalized view your brain has of who you have been told to be!
Since you have internalized your assumed gender from the time you were born, a part of you has also internalized it as truth.
The truth that you never dared to question. Or imagine your life in any other way.
Until now.
When you decide to do something about your life. Because the dissonance between who you truly are and who you have been taught to be is overwhelming!
And even though you know deep down inside you truly know who you are, the question still creeps up.
“Am I really transgender?”
Now you need to understand that this question is not arising out of self-doubt. Or lack of trust in yourself.
No! You KNOW! Deep down. You know you are transgender!
This question arises from years of gender socialization you have been conditioned to.
And the older you are, the longer you have been exposed to gender socialization.
This explains why transgender kids of today, and younger adults, have less of an internal dissonance.
That’s because the cultural and personal messages of gender communicated to them are different from the messages of gender that were conveyed to you.
If you find yourself constantly questioning if you are truly transgender, consider how gender socialization has shaped your current worldview.
Becoming aware of its effect will help you break free from the self-doubting cycle you find yourself in.