“My wife is not a controversy!” 

How the lives of trans people became a number one source of political debate

It is a sad reality that the lives of trans people have become one of the number one controversial political topics. From bathroom bills to “don’t say gay”-policies, attacks on LGBT-story reading, constant fights about support of LGBT youth at schools and trans health care, politicians and the media have taken a keen interest in trans individuals’ lives and mixed it with anything even remotely relating to gender. Every week, there is a new headline on trans issues. Even Russian President Vladimir Putin has attempted to state that gender fluidity and “cancel culture” were among the reasons for his war on Ukraine, trying to bond with J.K. Rowling who has helped nurture the idea that trans people – trans women in particular — are potential predators and that cis women need to be protected from them.¹ In many countries, we see conservative leaders position themselves as anti-trans voices. The obsession with trans people has led to the demonization of trans individuals and has created an environment where trans people are constantly under attack. As the wife of a trans woman, I would like to share how the ongoing media debate affects our lives.

Same person: Different perception

For six years, I have lived with my wife, who happens to be trans. When I met her, people still read her as a cisgender man — tall, athletic, a shoulder to lean on — and everyone had always told her that “he” was outstandingly caring, social, empathetic and kind. She was popular and successful, a leader in many social endeavors. She had always enjoyed hanging out with her female friends and always felt a bit displaced in the company of her male friends, especially in groups. Nevertheless, for 38 years she had tried to convince herself that she was “one of the guys”. She knew that life would be easier if she continued to play the role that society had chosen for her. And for many years she even thought she was who everyone said she was. It is difficult to find your truth on the inside, when the outside keeps telling you that your anatomy determines your role.

She had worked as a teacher, was a caring parent, and it was always pointed out how much more she was willing and eager to care for the kids and work in the house than the “other” guys. Well, she wasn’t one of them. 

Living with my wife, I have come to understand the pain and frustration that many trans individuals and their loved ones feel. The constant attacks on trans individuals, their rights, and their dignity are simply unbearable.

Our lives changed from being well-accepted members of our community to being a controversy.

The looks we receive from other people changed from the friendly, pre-approving, neighborly nod to stares, frowned eyebrows, sometimes laughs of groups of young people. Did someone just tell an unrelated joke? Sometimes there is a rude shout from a half-strong puberterian, then we hope that someone from their peer group will tell them: “Shut up!” When my wife is out on her own after dark, I fear for her safety more than my own.

My wife wasn’t able to work in her profession anymore. She was a teacher. Most students accepted the change from “Mr.” to “Mrs.” without further ado. Many appreciated knowing there was a safe grown-up to talk to about gender and orientation in a world in which you can never be sure unless someone explicitly says: “Your diversity is safe here.” But suddenly no one in her staff room sought her company anymore. No more lunch dates. No more chats in the corridor. Nobody checking in. And she withdrew too. It gets tougher when you don’t know what people think. Old friends asked: “Are you sure this is the right thing?” “And what is this like for your kids? It must be hard for them.” When she came out to her best friend, he said: “You’d make a really ugly woman.” They never spoke again after that.

Rejection is everywhere

She started to see the injustice. Against other people, trans and non-binary. How they were constantly treated as if they were a nuisance. As eccentrics who demand too much. As confused people who don’t know what they are talking about and who have just watched too many YouTube-videos. Who were told they were too young to know or too old to come out. Or who couldn’t do this to their parents, their children, their spouse, grandma, or their surroundings. Who were co-opted by a “trend”, a gender-gaga ideology. And who want to take gender away from everyone, want to steal words like “woman”, “mother”, “father”, “man” and turn the whole world into a genderless blur.

The way we are treated at offices, in job interviews, in hospitals, when meeting other people, changed. “We haven’t had anything like this here before.” “We have a funny feeling about you working here.” “We think our customers might be confused” and “Seriously, are you already a REAL woman?“: We heard it all. I never know if she will be treated well, when she goes anywhere on her own. I became a helicopter partner. I always want to protect her. Be there to correct, when some people use “he” over and over again, no matter how often they are corrected. Keep smiling. They don’t mean to do harm.

But more often than not we crash once we are on our own. It wears you down. To constantly not be seen, to not be understood.

Rejection is so omnipresent that we have started to assume it. My wife would love to play her favorite sport again. It’s always been soccer. She’d love the community of a team. But which team would accept her? A women’s team? A team with men? She won’t even ask. What if the request tore the team apart? What if she just can’t deal with another rejection.

My wife lost her kids. Like so many trans people do. Being perceived as a caring, loving parent, the “father” who goes the extra mile changed to being perceived as the selfish weirdo who follows — what? — an obsession?, a preference?, an insanity? and places her needs over “everyone else’s”. No longer “daddy”, but “We already have a mum!“ Who am I to my kids? “Take the kids away from her.“ We mourn the loss of her kids every day.

A slow start to a new life

Slowly we found new friends, a new tribe. People, who get it. Trans people, non-binary people, many of which were going through the same experience: Loss of family, loss of housing, loss of job, loss of community, massive anxiety. Meanwhile finding themselves. Following the inner compass. Learning to breathe. Asking for help.

And they told us about their struggle: Not being taken seriously, being treated like traitors, being kicked out of houses, mocked, demoted, hidden from society, shamed and humiliated. And they often accepted this poor treatment as the new norm. Due to internalized transphobia and shame. How much can I ask for? I really am somewhat too much.

I need to make this clear: The community isn’t only sadness and pain, it’s also games and joy, mashed potatoes and chosen family, euphoria, hugs and care, relief and deep friendships, but it cannot be hidden that there is a weight, a burden and — often — despair. Too many funerals, too many hospitalizations, loneliness. Young people, and old, lost to feeling unwanted, othered, misunderstood.

And parents know that the stats are shocking. So, tragically, they too often try to convince their child that they are not trans. “It’s just a phase.” “You can’t be right.” “Stop dressing like this.” “What’s wrong with your pronouns and the name that I gave you?” Attempted conversion. With horrible outcomes.

It’s not a whim — it’s biology

Biology is much more diverse than we think.

Once we thought, the whole world consisted of right-handed people. And so we perpetuated right-handedness. Made a world to fit right-handed people. And suggested to every new person: “Here is a pen, put it in your right hand.” 

We now know that left-handed people exist. They are quite common. Actually, no harm to society at all. When forced to act like right-handed people the “converted left-handed people” face many challenges: Difficulty focusing, headaches, learning disorders, difficulty reading, insecurity, stress, depression. Converting left-handed people means forcing them to constantly try to work against their own brain. It is the same with converting gay and trans people. Only that it is even harder to act against the inner compass of gender and orientation.

And just like gender, handedness isn’t a binary.³ Some humans can use both hands alike, some have certain tasks that they naturally perform with their left and others with their right hand. Numbers of openly left-handed people have risen. Nevertheless, handedness is not a controversy. We do not assume a left-handed agenda, we don’t suggest left-handedness should not be mentioned in schools to stop the “epidemic” or to prevent “confusing” young minds. Because handedness is not an ideology.

Many people hold on to the simplified biological rule that one type of people is male and one type of people is female and that the difference can be — without a doubt — determined at birth and shall be set in stone, you shall live and use pronouns accordingly.

And they try to convert. At school, at home, at work they use the best tested and reliable methods for conversion: nagging, punishing, hurtful teasing, forcing, shouting, ignoring, intimidating, excluding. In short: bullying. 

We see with our friends in the community: In a twisted, mean way, bullying can have an effect. It can change behaviour. It can change whether people will show a side of themselves TO YOU. It can destroy happiness. It cannot change who you are. It cannot change your handedness. Only your performance of handedness. Your performance of gender. It can force someone back into a closet, where they will lack daylight, fresh air, room for development, freedom. It’s not changing gender!

Conversion Therapy: In practice, it means trying to stop or suppress someone from being gay, or from identifying as a different gender to their sex recorded at birth.

Being trans is not behavior. It is not a habit. It’s not a whim — it is biology. It’s human diversity like left-handedness, red-headedness, having freckles, dimples, a hereditary condition, a special height, an unusual ability. It just is.  

Conversion on trans and gay people has been attempted over many decades and centuries. Informally and formal, through institutions. There is plenty of research: It will not work! And hence the formal versions are in the process of being banned or have been banned in 16 countries. Nevertheless, informally, so many people continue.

Believe me, almost all trans people have probably tried to convert themselves for a long time in their own heads before they came out.

Not because I’m transphobic

Why does this happen? It is not that people seriously have negative experiences with trans people. Many people feel that the world has changed a lot over the last decades — and it has. They might have supported social change in some areas, but now they feel that one of their earliest views of the world, one of the things they never thought could be shaken, shall be taken away from them: The division into men and women. 

They do not realize that that in itself is a worldview, an ideology. When a baby is born, we assume we know their gender and their orientation. And we act surprised, when we learn the first guess wasn’t quite right. Still, we don’t blame the doctor or our expectations, but the messenger: the person coming out to us.

This division into men and women has dominated our lives and media and beauty standards. We all came to associate success, attractiveness, and even worthiness of friendship and company with stereotypical gender cliches: the manly man, head of the football team super hero and the femme woman head cheerleader homecoming queen are still the personifications of everything many people want for their children, their partners and their favourite employees. Success in many aspects of life lies on the extremes of the gender spectrum.

Pushing people towards this ideal, keeping them in their assigned box — is common. And hurtful. Converting them to who we thought they were and what we wanted for them. Nevertheless, conversion isn’t done because of transphobia. No. Just like racism, transphobia doesn’t actually seem to exist. Nobody is transphobic, of course. Everybody is so well-meaning.

It’s not that I’m transphobic, but I really don’t like this dress on you.

It’s not because you’re trans, but I’m just not comfortable around you anymore.

It’s not because you’re trans, but I thought you might not want to hang out with us anymore, so we didn’t invite you.

I’m not transphobic, I just don’t want you in this bathroom.

I accept that you are trans, but you just aren’t a man.

I’m not transphobic, I just don’t want to use your name.

It’s not because I’m transphobic, but our customers might be.

I’m not transphobic but I understand everyone who has a problem with you being trans.

They are rejecting you? YOU have to understand. It’s hard for them.

It is not surprising that trans people who pass as the gender they want to be recognized as, face less discrimination than others: In the views of the public, they fit the binary again. A trans woman in a public bathroom with smooth skin, long hair and small shoulders is safer than one whose facial hair has started to grow back or who developed a wider jaw during a testosterone-dominated puberty she had to go through. Transgender health care often is a matter of safety. And while few would blink an eye to help their cisgender daughter receive medical help if she was growing facial hair that made others mock and misgender her, many still have “a funny feeling“ to allow access to medically approved care to their transgender children.

What makes us think this is a referendum? Why do we get to vote on other people’s health care? I say no one should be able to vote on other people’s health care. These decisions need to be made by committees of medical professionals and ethics specialists on the basis of scientific data. The public doesn’t vote on health care for people who need a knee replacement or whether smokers should get the support they need. And we have to stop publicly debating trans health care like this is a topic that you just get to have an opinion on, no matter how much you (don’t) know.

What would help?

The only thing that would really help, would be for society to finally understand the biology of it all. It is crucial that society understands: Transness just is.³ It is not “a man wanting to live as a woman” or “a woman wanting to live as a man” or “a girl rejecting her gender” or even “a man who used to be a woman”. The cisgender notion that biological sex comes in two variants and the size of the external genitalia at birth determines everything for the rest of one’s life just doesn’t cover it all.⁴

Being a trans woman doesn’t mean you are a man identifying as a woman.

It means being a woman who has been born with a rare hormonal profile.

It’s biology. It’s nature. It just is.

It doesn’t mean that YOU are not a woman, a mother, a man or a father or that these categories do not exist: nobody is telling you who you are.

The only thing that trans people ask for, is that you do the same with them:

1. Believe them that they know, just like you know. 

2. Affirm their gender with their pronouns and names, just like yours is affirmed with yours.

3. Allow for them to express their gender through their clothes, their hair styles, their looks just like you do.

4. Accept that their existence isn’t in any way dangerous to children, just like yours isn’t.

5. Notice your feelings of rejection and question them. We have all grown up in a transphobic world.

6. Put yourself in someone else’s shoes not by imagining what it would be like to “want to be the other gender“ but what it would be like if everyone thought you were a different gender while you know that you are you.

7. Help normalize human diversity. Question your feeling that anyone needs to be protected from the existence of trans people: not your grandma, not a child, not a school community. Humans exist in different shapes and colors.

8. Don’t mix performance and personality. If you don’t love drag performances because it’s not your type of theatrical art, fine. But do not confuse drag performers and transgender people: One is an art form that plays with gender roles, the other is people and their wish for acceptance.

9. Be informed. Get your information from LGBTQ-organizations and research some of the questions you might have. If you do ask trans people about their experience, then ask in an open-minded way. Never hide an attack behind a question. Don’t blame trans people for your transphobia. And make sure that you don’t leave the impression that you find transness so strange that you wish there was an instruction manual.

10. Be outspoken. At your work, in your family, and when talking to the neighbors: Let it be known that you are an active ally. Do not wait till someone comes out to you to express support for the LGBTQ-community, but do help to actively create a welcoming environment for anyone who might belong to a misrepresented minority.

A Broken Record

Writing this, I feel like a broken record. I have written this text over and over again in my head for six years. Every time there is a headline, every time there is a stare, every time a community member is mistreated, every time we cry. For the first three years, I responded to every headline with letters to the editors, articles, podcast statements, interviews. I tried to fight an image that was being created over and over again and that would form the opinions on strangers encountering my wife and other community members. I could see life getting more and more difficult with every headline and far too often I got caught in the hateful comment section that called for war on diversity.

Sometimes, there was success: A letter to the editor published, a harmful phrasing softened in a journalist’s text, some comments of support, a person telling me they understand better now. Maybe I can help stop this. I couldn’t.

For about two years, I gave up. I just let it all happen. We withdrew into loneliness, togetherness, that was safe. What would happen would happen.

Today, I find myself writing this. The headlines increased, schools are taking back support for some of their most vulnerable students. In many areas, there is absolutely no progress. Some things are getting worse. I need to speak again and hope it will create some change.

It is essential to understand that the lives of trans people cannot be a controversy. Everyone should have the right to live their lives free from discrimination and harassment. Everyone should have the right to access healthcare, to have legal recognition of their gender identity, and to live their lives with dignity and respect.

As a society, we must move beyond the controversy surrounding trans people and start advocating for their rights and well-being by promoting public education. We need to challenge the harmful stereotypes and prejudices that have been used to marginalize trans people and their experiences. We need to listen to the voices of trans individuals and their families and create an environment that is supportive and accepting of their identities.

We need to keep in mind that the controversy, the debate, the negotiation and the hurtful discourse re-traumatize trans people and their loved ones every time they come up. Currently, that is a weekly reality.

It took me three days to write this text. Meanwhile, my wife was struggling, sleepless, irritated, crying, and feeling guilty for not being able to be a better activist. The paradox of discrimination.

It throws us back to all the times we have been hurt just because we are.

1. BBC “Ukraine war: JK Rowling hits back at Putin’s ‘cancel culture’ comment

2. The Guardian, “‘I will not be held prisoner’: the trans women turned back at Ukraine’s borders”

3. JNeurosci  “Long-Term Consequences of Switching Handedness”

Deutschlandfunk “Zurück zur starken Hand”

4. Science Daily “Transgender: Evidence on the biological nature of gender identity”

5. Mayo Clinic “Ambiguous genitalia“

Tags: featured, Identity, politics, Transgender

Category: Transgender Body & Soul, Transgender Politics, Transgender Science