Being different: transgender

Sometimes it can be quite challenging when you deviate from the norm, when you are 'different'. Even more so when the actions and inaction of others emphasise your difference. In this post I want to try to give a glimpse into my life and how I experience this. Please note, this is only my experience. Others will have a different experience.

I plan to write similar posts in the future about different ways of how I deviate from the norm and I invite you, if you experience being different or being seen as such, to join this initiative and also write about your being different, so that we can all learn from each other, including those who fall within the norm.

I sometimes joke about being transgender. Not because I want to avoid difficult conversations, but rather to make people think: when I say that I'm transgender, I mean that I've transcended gender. This is often followed by an in-depth conversation about what it means to me to be transgender and I will do my best to explain it in this post.

First of all, the term transgender has two meanings: 1) going through a (complete) social and medical transition and 2) deviating from the (binary) gender (male/female) that we are assigned at birth. In this post I will discuss both.

From a young age I have felt that I do not fit into the 'man' box. From what I remember it started in the later years of primary school, with (self-imposed) restrictions on what clothes I could wear. I saw girls in my class wearing nice clothes and was extremely jealous that I could not wear those as a boy. Whether my parents really would not allow me to do so, I will never know. I was too scared of being judged and of being excluded (even) more that I just kept it to myself. I suffered in silence, certainly from the age of 11, but possibly from a younger age.

Out of fear of being 'discovered' I started to overcompensate, even though as an outsider in my class it was difficult to join in with the boys, both in middle school and in university. Everything to convince myself that I really am a boy. The attentive reader may notice that my actions were mainly determined by my fear and insecurity and not (anymore) by expectations from my environment. As long as I can remember, until I came out as transgender at the age of 26, I lived in fear that I would be unmasked.

To be honest, in a way I am glad that it took so long until I dared to go to the gender clinic. It saved me a lot of other suffering. If I had gone two or three years earlier, I would have been left with (much greater) trauma from my transition. Until the current transgender law came into effect in 2014, it was mandatory to first undergo gender reassignment surgery and be permanently infertile before having one's name and gender designation changed. Former minister Ingrid van Engelshoven (Emancipation) apologised for this on November 27, 2021, with everyone who suffered this suffering receiving financial compensation (the amount of which probably does not even cover the costs of psychological treatments resulting from this suffering).

That said, my experience at the gender clinic of the Amsterdam UMC (then still VUmc) was certainly not easy. Too many of the processes, methods, practices or whatever were very much focused on binary gender. At many points I had to educate my counsellors and I had to stand tall against doctors and psychologists who did not seem to want to respect my right to self-determination. In the end I got what I wanted, but that cost me a lot more effort than it should have. It is partly thanks to my fighting spirit and perseverance that the processes at the gender clinic have (seem to) been adjusted, with more options available as standard for people who are currently at the clinic. I have goodies from genderaid.org at home, because I participated in the studies that preceded the creation of this information on two occasions.

While most people go to the hospital and can simply expect to receive help, the experience of many transgender people at the clinic is that the care providers are mainly concerned with gate keeping. For example, why should I have to (want to) wear make-up to be eligible for hormone treatment? So much for point 1.

Experience shows that point 2 is more difficult for many people, because the concept of woman and man is so deeply rooted in our way of life. In fact, babies who are born intersex often receive 'corrective' surgery before their first birthday so that they fit (better) into the boxes that we have. However, that is about sex and not about gender. Where sex has its origins in biology, gender is sociological. The most well-known example, although not entirely accurate, is perhaps that when a man dresses 'too feminine', he is considered gay, where 'dressing feminine' is a form of gender expression and gay or straight (or bi, pan, etc.) is about attraction. In its simplest form, gender is how we make sense of ourselves and when someone is unable to make sense of themselves using the options woman and man, they can look for another gender to explain themselves. In this context, being transgender means that someone does not recognize themselves in the gender that corresponds to the sex they were assigned at birth. To return to the anecdote at the beginning of my post, I don't use gender to explain myself. I'm just Evy.

But what does it mean for me to just be Evy? It means that I mainly do exactly those things that feel right for me. Whether it's the clothes I choose to wear (usually trousers from the men's department and shirts and sweater vests from the women's department), whether or not I wear make-up (maybe twice a year), how I use my voice (I can use what I learned in speech therapy to sound feminine, but I usually don't bother), whether and where I shave (only my legs, because the few times I wear a skirt or a dress I find it horrible to have hair on my legs; my face is now almost free of beard and moustache), etc.

However, just being Evy also has disadvantages. These are often things that cisgender people never think about and that they therefore easily take for granted. For example, there is no toilet or changing room for just Evys. If I have to make a binary choice in such cases (when there is no gender-neutral option), I will go for the ladies' toilet or the ladies' locker room because my body (now) mostly resembles a woman's body. However, it sometimes happens that I am addressed by someone who thinks I'm in the wrong room. And every time it's on me to explain that I am in fact in the correct room.

Another example is the use of pronouns. Because I am known as a woman in most places (as it is also stated in my passport), I am usually addressed as she/her or madam. However, it does happen that someone judges me differently and approaches me as he/him or sir. Very rarely am I judged as they/them and Evy. In the trans community it is customary to put your pronouns in your profile and to mention them when you introduce yourself. On online platforms such as GitHub and LinkedIn it is now often also possible to add them to your profile. A simple intervention to make the workplace more inclusive is to make pronouns a standard part of the email signature, because the more cisgender people do this, the lower the threshold becomes for transgender people to mention their pronouns, especially when they fall outside the binary or have just started transition. In addition, HR systems should offer the option to choose a non-binary option and if there is an employee directory, non-binary options should be present here as well.

There are also bigger disadvantages. For example, there are a large number of countries that I cannot safely travel to, as of six months including the US. I have already discussed with my manager that I will not go there on business trips. More recently, some European countries such as Hungary and the United Kingdom have also become less trans-friendly and a trend is visible in most 'Western' countries that acceptance is declining.

We often do not think about it and like to believe that the Netherlands is doing very well when it comes to transgender rights, but for a number of years now the Netherlands has been middle of the list in Europe. If I want an X in my passport (yes I do, but that did not exist in the Netherlands in 2017), there are currently only two countries in Europe where the law provides for this. If I want recognition in the Netherlands that I am neither a woman nor a man, I have to go to court for this and I will easily have to spend two thousand euros. Last year and again earlier this year, our government passed motions to drop the bill for a new transgender law without substantive treatment. Even this bill would not provide for gender marker X, because an attempt to include it in 2022 failed.

I could go on and on about things that emphasise my being different as a transgender person, often unconsciously and unintentionally. Over time, I have developed thick skin because almost every day I encounter something that makes me feel unseen or excluded and it takes too much energy to speak up every time. To have to explain myself every time, to educate people and to keep my patience and remain calm, to maintain the nuance, because I wish we were much further along with inclusivity. That is why we need allies, people who are cisgender and who can use their privilege to also say what is going wrong bluntly. Because if I'm blunt about it, there is a much greater chance that people will get defensive or dismiss me as a whiner who only acts out of self-interest. The reality is that the more privilege you have, the better your position is to speak out about these kinds of things. Nevertheless, I do what I can to improve the position of transgender people, even if it sometimes takes a lot of energy. That is part of why I am publishing this post, because it’s of Pride Month.

Evy (they/them)