Gender is very nuanced and complex. As you learn more about it, you’re learning about something deep and expansive—like wines, for instance. At first, you might think there’s just white wine and red wine. But there’s a huge variety beyond that. There’s different kinds of grapes, like merlot, carmeniere, sangiovese. There are infinite ways they can blend. The region and...
The word “cisgender” refers to any person for whom the gender assigned to them when they were born is accurate to the person that they are. In the 21st-century American culture I live in, all people are either designated to be male or female when they are born. So if a person is cisgender, the male or female designation given to them when they were born turns out to be an accurate...
You might think the word “transgender” refers to someone who used to be one gender, and then became another gender. That’s actually a common misconception. the transgender symbol Transgender refers to any person who was assigned a different gender when they were born than the gender that they really are. This is as opposed to cisgender, which is what our culture typically (and...
Whether or not you realize it, you were probably assigned a sex and a gender when you were born. This assignment would have been based on what doctors observed about your body, and the conclusions they drew from their observations. Once that assignment was made, it ended up on your birth certificate. Then on all your other legal documentation, like your social security, your driver’s...
If you think someone’s about to attack you, you don’t doubt your instincts. You just make the most effective move within your means. That’s why I’ve chosen to carry mace, and not a gun.* I don’t want my most effective move to be lethal. It’s only since I became visibly transgender ** that I developed the urge to carry a sidearm. It’s not that I feel more vulnerable now than I...
When somebody in your life comes out to you as transgender, it’s a big moment. How you respond can change the nature of your relationship with that person forever. It might even end the relationship, whether or not that’s what you want. What they’re saying might seem a little “out there” to you. Maybe you think, “no way—they’ve never shown me any signs of being the gender they’re telling me they...
At the beginning of 2019, I came out publicly as agender and took on my gender transition in earnest. I’d known I was agender for a while before that. I’ve been conscious of my lack of gender since I was four years old. I just didn’t have the words for it, and figured that since gender was so important to everyone else, I must just have some loose gender wires that I needed to figure out how to...
Personal pronouns are the parts of speech we use when we talk about someone in third person. Like in the sentence below: She‘s going camping with John, even though he’s bringing his brother with him. Personal pronouns aren’t a thing most cisgender people think much about, because they usually present no problems. But for a lot of transgender people, we think about them a lot, because people...
Agender: of, relating to, or being a person who has an internal sense of being neither male nor female nor some combination of male and female : of, relating to, or being a person whose gender identity is genderless or neutral Merriam Webster I’m no gender expert. In fact, I don’t even have a gender. You’d be better off calling me a “no-gender” expert. Expert? Still not accurate. That...
You saw the title: I got top surgery. You may know it more formally as a double mastectomy; less formally as the teet yeet.* Getting this surgery was an accomplishment that tested me as a person more than any skill or achievement I’ve ever bragged about on a resumé (and I have a pretty sweet resumé). If I’m supposed to be proud of something as dumb as my typing speed, I can be proud of this. I...