When You Don't Tick the Boxes

Oliver Donaldson (he/they)

When I came out as transgender, my mum was mainly concerned that I was wrong. That I was mistaken, because “you were so girly as a kid.”

But what does it even mean to be girly?

What does this socially constructed ideal of femininity have to do with me being trans? Feminine guys exist.

People tend to forget that there isn’t just one way to be trans. There’s such a normalised assumption that we must know we’re “in the wrong body” from a young age, and that we must act out against this expected gender performance from a young age, too. This expectation of what a trans person’s transition should look like can be harmful. The common timeline, seen in the likes of transition videos on YouTube, is that we knew we weren’t cisgender since we were really young. The maintenance of this idea can be isolating, especially for queer people with experiences or identities that don’t fit into these norms.

Growing up, YouTube was my only access to queer and trans content. Even then, it was something I had to watch on a private browser and quickly exit when a family member came into the room. Being trans didn’t seem like an option, because I didn’t tick the boxes that so many videos were telling me I should. I only started questioning my gender at 19, and the fact that I was quite feminine growing up almost removed the possibility from my mind that I could be a trans man. Even when I came out to my parents, my mum’s response unlocked these same insecurities that I had about myself, and the concern that I could potentially be wrong.

I talked to my mate (let’s call him Barney) about this, and he added that from childhood most trans people are forced into the gender role they were assigned at birth. This pressure adds difficulty to filling the expectation that you must know you’re in the “wrong body” from a young age. If you have to both fulfil your assigned gender role and indicate discomfort with that, things become a bit paradoxical.

Barney said, “It makes it way harder to figure out who you are when everyone around you is encouraging you to perform your gender in a certain way. So even for kids who may have been more stereotypically trans (in my case liking ‘boys’ things) it can still take a long time to figure out, thanks to society’s strict gender binary.”

Even though Barney was fairly masculine as a kid, he was encouraged to present more femininely and meet his assigned gender role, especially as he got older. My journey was complicated as I grew up in quite a traditional religion, where women wearing only skirts or dresses and having long hair was something ingrained in me from a very young age. So not only did I have this pressure to match my gender presentation to my assigned sex, I also didn’t want to be different in the church, especially as being part of such an enigmatic religion (it has no name) was isolating Enough.

Even when you apply for hormone replacement therapy (HRT), one of the questions they ask on the form is “what age were you when you started questioning your gender?” It’s already messed up that we need to prove our identity before receiving life-changing treatment, let alone answer questions that have ideal responses attached to them. It made me nervous that my answers weren’t “trans enough” or that I would be turned down because of them.

Unfortunately, even the more progressive doctors are restricted to using these old documents, and gender dysphoria diagnoses still hold too much significance in the medical system. Barney said, “While I’ve never been made to feel like any individual medical professional wanted me to prove to them I’m trans, the wording of a lot of the documentation and the regulations [...] gives the impression that they still have to assess our transness.”

While it often feels lonely to have trans experiences that don’t align with common narratives, many great resources have helped me. I mentioned YouTube as an example of media that tends to portray the more normalised journey of trans people. However, certain YouTubers made me feel seen when I was questioning my gender because I could relate to their journeys more. These include Aydian Dowling, CallmeLaddie, Jammidodger, amongst many others.

Also, an activist and author whose name deserves to be more well-known is Lou Sullivan. His published diaries (We Both Laughed in Pleasure), written from when he was ten until just before his death in the ‘90s, cover much of his gender discovery and transition. Usually, in trans timelines you hear the realisation, rather than the questioning, but Sullivan’s diaries cover all of this.

From him going through puberty and proclaiming, “I love being a girl” to going on testosterone and getting surgeries, writing “It was so nice to allow myself to say I am a man, to know I am a man.” These diaries helped me with my trans realisation, and they help in dismantling the myth that we must know we’re trans from early on.

In saying all of that, it does make it harder to discuss these ideas with family, because it is usually your parents pushing you into that assigned gender role. Like, I can’t really tell my mum that the reason I was “girly as a kid” was because she raised me in a religion that placed so much value on traditional gender roles. I guess I’m writing this because it is something that I would have benefitted from reading years ago. It was hard to unlearn the idea that, just because my journey has been different to the norm, that doesn’t make it any less valid. People whose gender discoveries and transitions take different timelines to the expected are still valid. Those who struggle to see themselves reflected in the media are valid. You are valid.