Gender presentation, transitioning, & acceptance

For those who don’t know, I’m trans. I transitioned in 2021; but back in 2018—when I was about to move in with Natalie—I had some fears about my gender presentation, my transition, and acceptance vs. rejection. The rather philosophical discussion below was from that time. I find it interesting to read back what my fears were pre-transition. If you’re trans and pre-transition, maybe this discussion will be helpful to you. At the end, I will say a few words on my perspective now that I have transitioned, and whether my fears were warranted.

Back in 2018

I am soon moving in with Natalie, and I am considering transitioning to female once I do. But Natalie has a teenage son—Landon—whom I have never met, and so I have been having some anxiety around the idea of meeting him and being confronted with my masculinity. When I am with Natalie, I can be myself; but with other people around me, I become painfully aware of the fact that, despite how I feel, I look male—or at the very least male-like.

Based on this, we had an interesting discussion about acceptance and judgment with respect to my gender presentation and identity, which we tried to reproduce here.

My fear of judgment

Natalie: What are you afraid of?

Eva: When I was with you and Landon was not, I could wear the clothes I wanted to wear, and considering you see me as female, I did not feel like a mirror was placed in front of me. Yes, I still tended to avoid actual mirrors, because what I see in the mirror does not correspond to who I feel I am. It is hurtful. I see a man in female clothes, and I do not like it; I do not want to be a man in female clothes. I am afraid of being confronted with other people’s perceptions of me; I am afraid of Landon looking at me and seeing what I see.

Natalie: That confuses me. I see you as you are—my girlfriend. I find you pretty and beautiful.

Eva: I know that is what you see, hence I have no fear of being around you. I am afraid no one else could see me like that. It is very uncomfortable to say the least not to be seen the way you feel. It creates a conflict of identity.

Natalie: Landon is like me. He does not judge. People call me non-judgmental, but I aspire to be as non-judgmental as he is. But it is not really even non-judgment; it is something beyond that. I guess what I am saying is that it is beyond acceptance, when I think of what that word means. You know, people accept what happened to them—in the case of abuse, for example—but they don’t like it. Or people walk around thinking they are not racist.

But it is more than that. They still see things as ‘Other’. Other than white, other than me, etc. You see, when we really like something, we don’t ‘accept’ it; acceptance in that case is already inherent, and so there is no action or process of accepting taking place. Such an action or process can only take place if previously there was a sense of ‘Other’ to be reconciled with—to be accepted.

And then there is another part to this. I don’t walk around and see males and females and think, “Oh that person is a girl; I accept that”. It wouldn’t even be anything noteworthy to bring up in conversation—you know, like when I was walking down the street today and I saw a girl. The notion of coming to acceptance only comes up with people that we think of in terms of ‘other’, unusual etc. I guess there really is no word for that state of intrinsic acceptance or not needing to go through the process of coming to accept, likely because it is a non-issue, and so we never came up with a word for it. Landon is like that. People are people are people. They are not gay people, black people, transgender people, white people, and males and females—it is just not on his radar. He does care about certain things, but it is intolerance that he dislikes. Does that make sense to you?

Eva: It does, but then here is my concern. I think of myself as very open-minded and non-judgmental. But I still have a sense of aesthetics, which others may or may not share. I like eccentricity, and I like it when people express themselves how they want. In that sense, I actually take enjoyment in seeing people dress extravagantly. It makes me feel like they have a strong sense of individuality, rather than that they adhere to what is conventional. And yet, when I see a guy with a beard and lipstick in neon green leggings, I would still register that as “curious”. I’m not sure it’s a judgment—or not a rejection, anyway—as I appreciate that he expresses himself the way he does. But it is certainly unconventional, and I can’t help but have an emotional/cognitive response to it. So I guess my my fear is that, despite being accepted, I will still be perceived as “unconventional” or “weird”. I have pride in my eccentricities, but I don’t consider my gender identity to be that. I really just want to fit in, where any eccentricities are going to be a personal choice instead of an inescapable aspect of my gender presentation and the ways in which I fail to pass as a woman.

I would pride myself in having the comfort of being more eccentric—or rather, to give more expression to my eccentricities—but it does make people look/stare. A consideration then has to be made as to whether I potentially want people staring at me for being myself. But dressing or carrying yourself in an eccentric way is a choice. To dress or not in accordance with my gender is also a choice, but my gender itself is not.

In other words, I may or may not choose to dress in an eccentric way, but I do not want to be perceived as eccentric on account of being transgender. I want to look female because that is how I feel. It is NOT an attempt at bringing attention to myself. I want to not only be accepted as female, but seen as female. While I always figured accepting one another is a good thing, I realize now that being accepted still feels a lot like being tolerated. I may be accepted by those around me, but that does not stop people from staring when I wear nail polish, for instance.

Tolerance & acceptance

Natalie: The difference between tolerance and acceptance seems quite clear—in the former case, people are allowed to be the way they are, but there is judgment; in the latter case, there is indeed acceptance of the other, which goes beyond merely allowing them to be the way they are. But I realize there is a third category, which we do not seem to have a word for. It came to me over time, in response to contemplating people’s reactions to things I talked about. For example, I would be talking about a friend of mine, Lisa, and eventually, a different friend would meet them, and they would say to me, “You did not tell me Lisa was black”. And this happened over and over in my life. And I would think, “Why would I say that she is black? How was that information in any way relevant?” But I guess somehow, people find it important to get information on what supposedly differentiates one person from another. If someone is different than me, then I may express that in a description of them. But it just does not occur to me to do that when it comes to skin color, or someone’s sexual orientation, or their gender. I just like people or I don’t; but it is based on how they treat me and others—not based on age, sexuality, gender, wealth, status, etc.

Eva: Indeed, the notion of acceptance emphasizes that there is an ‘Other’ to be judged. While we do make a distinction there between accepting with judgment (tolerating) and without (true acceptance), it is hard to fathom how the notion of acceptance has any validity without the notion of ‘other’. If there is no sense of ‘other’, then what is it that needs to be accepted? Acceptance thus seems to mean, “I do acknowledge you as ‘other’ rather than of kin, but I have no judgment, so I will treat you AS IF you are kin” (rather than see you as such). And perhaps others are not even treated AS IF they are kin, as research indicates that people subconsciously react to anything they see as other than themselves; even infants at three months old show a preference towards faces of a particular ethnicity, which is not necessarily their own ethnicity, but the ethnicity in their immediate—and most intimate—environment. This is very interesting because it seems that, to some extent, judgment is inescapable. Or at the very least, preference is inescapable, and there does tend to be a lot of judgment based on those preferences—or more accurately, a sense of ‘other’ based on those preferences.

So I definitely see how, in principle, there needs to be a third word that means acceptance, but without any implications of a sense of ‘other’ that ought to be accepted, rather than seen as equal—a more idealistic notion of acceptance than what we commonly mean by the word. In practice, I do wonder if there is actually a distinct use for the word. Is anyone truly without judgment? Does Landon have no sense of ‘other’?

It also surprises me that you say you aspire to Landon’s level of non-judgment when you were the one that taught him to be that way.

Without judgment

Natalie: Well yes. I brought him up without judgements. He grew up seeing me act and speak in a way that never treated people as ‘other’ or ‘special’ because they were different. You know, he grew up with me running down the street to give a homeless person—who had come into a coffee shop and looked longingly at the muffins—a muffin, and heard me say, “Excuse me Sir. I noticed that you were looking at the muffins so I bought you one.” And I remember we would talk about it because he would be scared that I would be hurt by this person who looked so unkempt (at least that is what I assume). But he only saw how people reacted when you treated them with respect and kindness and so I suppose this is what he saw in his world as ‘normal’. He saw me never lie, or cheat, and he saw me cry over people’s suffering. He would say you know mom you can’t stop all 7 billion people from suffering, and I would cry more.

Second, in our house words like ‘fuck’ and ‘shit’ were fine, but ‘evil’, ‘stupid’, ‘fat’, ‘ugly’—those were swear words not to be used. I remember when Landon was 4, one time a teacher talked to me after school, and told me that Landon had said that someone had used ‘the s-word’. She of course thought the kid had said ‘shit’, and I said “no, that would be the word ‘stupid’.”

Landon was raised to use non-judgmental words. Instead of ‘evil’ we would use the word ‘misguided’, as evil implies an inherent property while misguided implies a distorted perception of things that can be remedied. When he would read out loud he would switch evil to misguided. I believe that when we use these concepts of judgment we dehumanize a person, and the moment we do that we give ourselves permission to do very horrible things, such as ethnic cleansing.

And so I thought who cares about curse words? But let’s care deeply about words that make other people ‘other’.

Eva: That is very interesting. I think everyone should be brought up that way. You state you made a decision to refrain from using words that taint people’s perceptions of other people—words that make them into ‘others’. I first want to emphasize that the words we use to describe others do not only have the tendency to create societal perceptions, but also offer a framework for the person using these words to see others. In other words, by using judgmental language, there is a larger focus on judgment. By taking away the words that give expression to those judgments, the tendency to judge itself is less likely or difficult to cultivate.

I don’t think it’s just a matter of taking away those words, however. I do think that despite preferences, a sense of judgment is largely and perhaps predominantly cultivated. As such, it is a matter of raising a child free of judgment. I think this is a chain that needs to be broken; people are raised in an environment full of judgment, and tend to grow up the same way. Perhaps on account of my autism (though I do not know whether it can be attributed to that), I did get rid of my judgments along the way. My siblings seem to have a lot of judgments, still. I feel it only creates bitterness. There really seems no point in spending one’s time judging people.

Natalie: But of course, I did not grow up with this lack of judgment. I was born in South Africa, and I do not like discussing that with people. It makes me think they will think I have racist views. Even as a little child, I liked the black children; I wanted to play with them, but they would throw rocks at me, and I would feel so hurt. And my family was racist. My uncle called me a cunt for asking him not to use the term ‘nigger’ at Christmas. I booked a flight and left his house a few hours later.

So I grew up with a family and a country that were very judgmental. I grew up during apartheid, which devalued people to such an extent that a black person would be killed for a mere $5. In this environment, ‘other’ indicated inferiority—that another person is less in some way. But we traveled and lived in a lot of different places before I was 13, and I would see people that were other, and they were the same in many ways—only different in experiences and cultures. But it did not make them less. So I thought all of this through, and I did not agree with my family’s values. I often wonder why I questioned it, as so many people who grow up in racist households become racist themselves. I wonder if it has something to do with me being autistic and the way we process the world. Being non-judgmental is one of our characteristics.

I know Landon has now thought it through too; but initially, it was all he knew. He does have autistic traits, but it’s an open question as to whether he is actually on the autistic spectrum.

Living in a world of judgment

Eva: Do you feel like raising Landon free of judgment created blind spots in terms of evaluating people, or is he very aware of it all but doesn’t taint it with his own judgments?

Natalie: It is important to understand that it is not that we are naive. We are very aware that there are these issues; however we are strongly averse to them, and we both feel that they are wrong.

Landon volunteers in the Pride Parade every year, and he advocates. And as his friends have gotten older he has stopped being friends with those he felt were judgmental. This is where I feel he is less judgmental than I am, as he does not denigrate that person for the judgments he has about people, but it is just something that he does not want to be around. He seems to be able to just walk away from that so he isn’t surrounded by it*, whereas I can get quite passionate about it and want the judgment to stop. And yet we both are advocates.

* Landon states he is very passionate about it, but that yelling at people does not make a difference. However, he considers anyone who does not speak up to be spineless. He feels that people should advocate in a way that educates people.

And so you are Eva, and that is it. You have certain qualities, your height, your hair color, your gender etc. And we are aware of them, but a person being gay or not registers about the same as blonde or brunette, neither here nor there. Landon is the only person who, upon understanding that you are transgender, did not ask, “Does that make you gay, straight, or bisexual?” It is a non-issue for him, and not relevant in any way.

I am very aware that many people will judge me, you and everyone else. That is the way much of the world operates. And it affects things like our career, job opportunities, living location, whether people with conflicting beliefs will want to connect with each other etc. The world is, unfortunately, full of judgment.

Does accepting others imply judgment? I think for most people—even very open-minded people—this is indeed the case. To get to genuine acceptance may be to become free of judgment of the other person, but the very action or process of accepting implies there was beforehand a distance—a sense that the other person is not like you—which, upon acceptance, became reconciled. I do question whether acceptance implies judgment, but the action of accepting others actually emphasizes the otherness rather than reconciling it in full.

I accept gay people not because homosexuality is in my preference, but because my preferences should not constrain other people in their expression of who they are. I do not consciously judge gay people in any way, but the very fact that “I accept gay people” means something, indicates that it is something seeking societal resolution—something which is being judged.

Regardless of whether I will be accepted or rejected, people will have to consider it—make a judgment—in order to get to acceptance of me—or indeed rejection of me.

Now, in 2024

So in hindsight, do I feel my fears were warranted? I don’t actually have a straightforward answer. I still understand why I was afraid, so in that sense my feelings seemed reasonable and valid. It’s largely a fear of the unknown, and of being judged by someone I wanted to like me. Plus, I struggled with my own self-image and gender dysphoria. I think Landon probably never judged me—certainly not for being trans—so in that sense my fears were unwarranted.

But I realize now that what I probably feared the most was not the lack of acceptance, but being confronted by my own gender dysphoria and self-judgment. I essentially projected a sense of tolerance rather than true acceptance onto those around me, and feared being judged by them because I judged myself. I thought I was valid as a trans person, but how could anyone see me as female when I looked the way I did? I felt it wasn’t even right to identify as female, and to claim female pronouns; and while it felt appropriate on the one hand to be called Eva, it was also very confrontational and painful to me. I felt comfort when Natalie called me Eva; but with most others, I felt like a fraud.

And that’s so bizarre to think about now, because I now have a better sense of the fact that I have always been female in terms of my brain wiring and phenomenology. You can read more about that in my article on autism, transness, & gender identity. Okay, I endured male socialization and had some of my innate femaleness overwritten by gender schema and imposed gender roles that didn’t belong to me. But fundamentally, I have always been the same person I am now, and it’s actually painful to realize that I didn’t think my identity was valid on account of how I looked.

Gender presentation & phenomenology

I feared being judged because my self-image and sense of validity of my identity were so fragile. I no longer feel that way now. Maybe not even due to any spiritual or psychological growth per se, but maybe simply because my current gender presentation feels congruent with who I am, so it feels like I have more of a right to claim who I am. Although my self-esteem has certainly grown as well.

I’m often confronted with transphobia online; with people who have a lot of contempt for me due to what I represent to them as a trans person. And although that still feels uncomfortable, I’m pretty fearless about it now. When someone tells me that I’m a man and I will never be a woman, I respond, “So? I’m happy. That’s all that matters.”

I mean, I know I will never have sex chromosomes, genetics, gonads, and genitals associated with females. But I don’t really care. What has been most important for me is that I can socially live like the woman I am. What difference would it even make for my life if my sex chromosomes were XX instead of XY? These endless debates about what constitutes a woman strike me as silly. I’m a woman at heart. If other people can’t recognize that, I feel that’s a skill issue on their part.

The point is, I’m no longer afraid of not being accepted or having people deny my identity, as I know who I am; my identity is valid irrespective of whether others acknowledge it. I think they’re silly geese and bags of flour if they can’t. 😆