Fine. Here’s How to Not Be Trans.
My uninformed stab at counseling, by popular demand.
I get letters. Mostly, they come from trans widows. Women whose husbands have started crossdressing, or who have started on estrogen, or who have asked to be slapped around in the bedroom. Less frequently, women whose lesbian partners have started transition. These women want help coping with their partner’s announcement. They want to choose the right course of action for themselves, not to control their partners’ choices. They see me not as an expert, but as a comrade.
I understand why I get these letters.
I can speak to these women. We’ve had front row seats to the same circus, fought the same fight. No one understands, as we do, the sexual dysfunction, the mood changes, the social and political pressure to stamp down our feelings and join the party.
I also get letters from men. “I’m struggling,” they say. “I’m tempted by the allure of transition.” They ask me how they can avoid being trans.
I don’t understand why I get these letters.
I am not a psychologist, a psychiatrist, a therapist, a social worker, or an educator. I do not know the “allure” of transition. I’m just a woman with a trans ex-husband. In my memoir and in my articles, I make a point of staying in my lane. I talk about what I saw and experienced, focusing on my own values and my own journey. I guess it’s escaped their notice, but I’ve already failed to do what these guys are asking me to do. I couldn’t get an intimate partner who promised love “til death do us part” to value our fifteen-year partnership more than his transition goals. How am I supposed to persuade a stranger?
The men who write me are adolescents and young adults. They are attracted to women. They mention their interest in anime, faeries, and fantasy. Thus far, I’ve kept my responses short, directing them toward more appropriate resources. But they keep writing. Sometimes more than once.
So screw it. Here’s my advice.
But first—you tell me something.
Tell me why your “gender” is so all-fired important.
In a time and place of unprecedented LGBTQ+ acceptance, tell me why you must bellyache about the degree to which you conform or fail to conform to masculine and feminine stereotypes. Tell me what drives your need to pinpoint and label and announce the particular combination of personality traits you call your “gender.”
Are you at all aware how utterly common gender nonconformity is? For at least the five decades preceding 2015, people managed a stunning variety of gendered expression without undue fanfare or self-obsession. Prince, David Bowie, Grace Jones, Annie Lennox, Elton John, Boy George, Dee Snider, Joan Jett, Marlene Dietrich, Liberace—all managed to present their fabulous selves to the world without ruminating on pronouns or bankrolling the medical industrial complex.
I guess you don’t know this yet, but trying to be a certain type of person, versus trying to do interesting things, is a futile behavior—and a very adolescent one. It’s people who’ve not yet matured who try to substitute honing an image for personal growth.
This is understandable. It’s hard to develop the talents and interests that will eventually turn you into a compelling human being. It’s easy, in the meantime, to don the costume of emo, or scene, or Lolita, or egirl, or nonbinary, or transgender, or any other identity defined by clothing, props and labels. Before you, there were goths, punks, valley girls, preppies, beatniks and greasers. Their black lipstick, their quirky glasses, your fuchsia hair—none of it lasts and none of it matters.
So for god’s sake, zoom out a bit. Get out of your own head and get a look at your place in history and culture, in time and space.
Your desire to be understood is as old as dirt. Your carefully curated costume is tomorrow’s museum fodder. Your anxiety about your sexual interests is normal. Your dysphoria is utterly common, notwithstanding the modifier that’s been recently attached. Your suffering seems special because it’s yours.
Most young people, and many older, are dysphoric about their weight, their acne, their distribution of body hair, their chest, their butt, the size and shape of their genitals, and a host of other things. We all want to look like some teenage movie star, even as nature stubbornly resists us. You’re no more deserving of the body of your dreams than the rest of us.
You’re not intersex, by the way. I have $100 on the existence of your Y chromosome, and I’ve never even seen you. You’re probably not “neurodivergent,” either.
You are not a unique snowflake.
Okay, you are a unique snowflake, but not because you like nail polish.
To come into your full uniqueness, and to make it known to others, you must embark upon the laborious but rewarding path of cultivating your interests and talents over time. Because anything worth being takes hundreds of hours of doing. We remember Prince because he played 27 instruments, released 39 albums, and sold more than 100 million records worldwide—not because he wore purple. You don’t have to do what Prince did. But you have to leave your room and do something.
Here’s how to not be trans.
Turn off your computer. Turn off your phone. Stop playing video games, scrolling, and watching porn. Go outside. Touch grass, as they say. But seriously. Turn over logs near the base of creek beds. Did you know there are often salamanders there? Walk through a meadow and examine the tops of wildflowers. Did you know praying mantises cling to asters in the fall, snatching bees for dinner and preparing to lay their egg sacks?
Volunteer somewhere. When you serve a bowl of hot soup to a heroin-addicted man with shit in his hair who hears voices, you gain perspective. Whether you feel more feminine today than yesterday starts to fade in importance. Go see your grandmother. She’s lonely and will appreciate your visit. Plus she holds a wealth of information and wisdom society is slowly losing. She’s probably slaughtered chickens with her bare hands or worked in a sweatshop or some shit.
On that note, spend time with different kinds of men. You’ll learn they’re not all meatheads who like baseball and strippers. There are plenty of sensitive and creative men in the world, and not just the gay ones. I know men who love cats, baking, hosting parties, yoga, dancing, acting and painting. They are no less male because of this.
Do something hard. Spend a day working on a farm. Build a midcentury modern TV cabinet. Start growing orchids. Travel to a foreign country. Deep clean all the windows. Train for a marathon. You’ll screw it up, but you’ll learn something, and then you’ll be smarter and more interesting. You’re overthinking your image because you have time on your hands, and you have time on your hands because you’re young and relatively affluent. No one who’s hunting boar with a homemade bow and arrow to survive is contemplating whether or not they like their brow ridge.
Doing hard things will serve you in the long run, as one day you’ll need to fully support yourself financially, and it’s helpful if you have developed the requisite grit and skills (including social skills and life wisdom as well as job skills). Don’t aim for an image. Aim for competence. Aim to become amazing. Aim high.
Face your fears. Work on your phobias. Increase your comfort zone by taking small but incremental risks. Admit to your mistakes and inch toward self-improvement, without beating up on yourself (because that’s self-indulgent, too). If you’ve experienced trauma, start to examine those experiences and work through them.
Spend time with your family. Go fishing with your dad. Call your aunt. Send handwritten cards on birthdays. Your parents are going to die. Your nieces and nephews are going to grow up. You’re going to wish you had cherished this time of your life more than you did. One day (if you’re lucky) you’ll be my age, and realize that nearly every older person who touched your life is gone, and your friend group is dwindling too. You’re going to need those people who are still around. You’ll need a ride to the doctor, a place to spend Christmas, a hug when you’re feeling down. Don’t take your people for granted. Don’t assume they’ll be around if you’re currently treating them like furniture (or worse).
Touch another human being. Kiss someone. Be gentle, and focus on her pleasure instead of yours. And for god’s sake, don’t modify your body before you’ve had a proper long and intense groping by a romantic interest. One day, that sex drive you hate, and those organs you take for granted, are going to serve you. You’re going to experience a kind of deep and nourishing pleasure you can’t conjure up by yourself. And you’re going to make another person very happy, forging through physical intimacy the kind of bond that leads to love and lifelong commitment. There’s no hurry for this, but don’t rob your future self of it.
Your pain is ancient but its name is new. You believe you’re transgender because you live in a culture swimming in transgender. Have you heard of culturally bound phenomena? Gender identity education has been a part of grade school curricula for only about a decade. With this, transgender identities have spiked among kids with trans friends who otherwise lack risk factors. Like any cultural trend, it clusters generationally. It’s “quintupled” among 18- to 24-year olds, “quadrupled” in the next age group, and “exploded” in new cohorts, while its umbrella is constantly growing.
I work in IT. I date a woman. I hate makeup and seldom wear it. When I was with my ex, servers in restaurants routinely swapped our orders. He’d have the salad and I’d have the huge, nearly raw, bone-in cowboy ribeye. I like to camp and backpack. I never wanted an expensive engagement ring. But there is no need to invoke “transgender” to explain my personality, and because I was born forty years prior to its current conception, no one ever tried. Identity in general is a modern phenomenon, by no means fundamental to anything, and arguably of little value. You can’t just say you’re a guitarist. You have to play guitar. And since femaleness is a reality, not a practice, you can neither claim it nor train for it. You can only become a man with experience performing femininity. Your experience will be different from mine, and mine different from yours.
Speaking of practice, let’s talk about your neural network. The repetition of any behavior, good or bad, deepens neurological connections in the brain and makes that behavior even easier to repeat. When the behavior is rewarding—including when it is erotic—the process occurs faster. This is the psychology behind addiction. Your urge to crossdress is a compulsion fueled by eroticism, not a sign of womanhood, and is in fact aligned with patterns of male sexuality. Ruminating on ourselves is another habit fueled by repetition, and one we’re all prone to if we don’t keep it in check.
Remember: You are not the center of the universe. Remind yourself of this by looking far away.
Stand on a beach and look across the ocean. Climb a hill and stare at distant trees. Look over a city from the window of an upper floor in a tall building. Listen for faraway sounds, too. We spend our time in a “small wedge of experience that excludes whole worlds of discovery and inspiration,” especially in our screen-mediated modern world. Looking far away “reminds you that you live in a universe," inspires you, and increases insight.
Finally: Being not-transgender does not mean manning up or putting on boy clothes. It means being your actual true, authentic self. The part of you who wants to wear a pink blouse. And the part of you with the male body who navigated your younger days as a boy. This isn’t about repenting and purging like some shame-filled addict. This is about being a whole person. This is about understanding that one aspect of your being does not define you. Don’t let the trans contingent hoard all the rainbow pride; take pride in being a feminine male.
I know you think you know yourself, but that’s hubris. I’ve changed my mind on fundamental matters of grave importance many times between my twenties and my fifties. If you are a living, growing, intelligent human being, you don’t know your future self at all. And that’s a good thing. The last thing you want is to stay trapped in the immature mindset of a young, inexperienced you. You are not fully baked yet.
Now for those actually appropriate resources.
This article, written by my friend Corinna Cohn:
This statement from Corinna:
"You're going through puberty. You're also behind your peers socially. You'll catch up in adulthood. It sucks, but it gets better."
This organization:
I’ve focused my advice on a certain demographic. If you’re gay or female or partnered, your mileage may vary. At least a few older, married men have said that reading the story of my failed marriage inspired them to change course.
Whatever your situation, go in peace and find love and become the greatest you that you can be.
Shannon, this is -so- good. You’ve given voice to so many things I want to say and have tried in vain to say to my ROGD trans-ID kid. Thank you
I want to upvote this about a million times.