… I do sometimes kinda wonder, why not? As in, what are the reasons for me not being a transphobe? After all, as a lone loser, cisgender, heterosexual white man, I do belong to the demographic that appears to disproportionately soak up and represent most of the existing bigotries today, as well as in the past. With the added “bonus” that my life was, in a way, actually negatively impacted by a trans person. And I do know people with almost the exact same education and intelligence as mine, who probably are transphobic, at least a bit.
This will be a bit of a personal musing. I don’t think there will be anything triggering, but to someone, it might be, so be advised.
I first learned about the existence of trans people sometime before 1989, still behind the Iron Curtain. As a curious child and a voracious reader, I often read my parents’ magazines for adults behind their back (not to be confused with adult magazines; those didn’t exist), which discussed concepts and events not generally considered suitable for children. In one of these magazines, I read a column about a man in Sweden whose wife told him after a few years of marriage, “I think you are mentally a woman”. And after consultations with medical experts, he did undergo a sex-change operation and changed his official gender to female. (Note: the word “gender” does not have a Czech equivalent for personal identity; the word “pohlaví” covers both sex and gender. Currently, Czech appears to be in the process of acquiring the word “gender,” and it might take time for the vocabulary to settle.)
To be honest, I didn’t think about it that much at that time. Not more than the many other cool things that I read about. I filed it under “interesting,” and that was it.
In high school, the topic didn’t come up at all. At least I do not remember it. The biology class was milquetoast boring and simplistic when it came to teaching about sex determination: XY=male, XX=female in mammals, plus some differences in other animal clades. If there were any queer or non-binary people in my class, I never learned about it.
But a few years later, a girl from the high school class below ours transitioned to male. And again, when I learned about it, I didn’t think about it much – I was already studying biology at university, where I learned about the many complications that don’t conform to the binary view of sex determination and development. However, it is a sad fact that at least one person who learned those very same things in the very same class did express somewhat transphobic views to me a few years back.
And it was at the university too, where I actually came to know two trans people a bit more closely.
One presented initially as a man whom I strongly disliked for his absolutely disgusting hygiene habits, or, to be more precise, for his complete lack of any hygiene habits whatsoever. After she started transitioning to female, she became visibly happier and more comfortable with her new identity, but alas, she still didn’t develop proper hygiene habits during the time we interacted, although she learned how to apply makeup properly. That way, I learned that trans people are not special. They can still be smelly slobs, just like cis people. I have no idea what happened to this person; we haven’t interacted since.
The communal bathrooms and showers in the student dormitories were single-occupancy and therefore gender-neutral. So after she started to transition, she was simply moved from a room shared with two other people to a single-person room, and that had that issue sorted. We gossiped a bit, but nobody made a big issue out of it. I do not remember anyone getting out of their way to misgender her, or being mean, or insisting that she can’t be a woman. It was seen as curious, interesting, peculiar, extraordinary, but not worth being upset about or dwelling on. AFAIK, girls accepted her as one of them.
The second trans person I met at the university presented initially as a woman in whom I had romantic interest. I won’t go into the details; it didn’t go anywhere, obviously. The interesting thing about their transition is that they were treated as “he” by a lot of men long before they themselves actually thought of themselves that way. I did have a few heated interactions with people whom I have perceived as misgendering someone I liked, and I let my disdain known. Fast forward a few years, we went for a drink together, and I had the privilege of being one of the first people outside of immediate family to learn about their upcoming “official” transition to male.
I do remember that conversation well. I did say things that were perhaps a bit ill-informed from my perspective today, but I didn’t say anything mean or unsupportive. I accepted the new reality; I didn’t show how internally upset I am, I wished him well, I told him that his new identity is real, and that was it. We share a circle of friends; we meet about once a year, and we still consider each other friends. He is a divorced single dad now, and is accepted as a man by everyone whom I know.
This is the point where I was personally impacted – I was confused, torn, and heartbroken again. But all that was aimed inwards – I examined my feelings, my orientation, my person. I quickly found out that having once been attracted to a short-haired athletic woman who turned out to be a trans man does not make me gay, or even bi. I never did and still don’t find men sexually attractive. I still like athletic women with short hair, but truth be told, I don’t have an actual type – I was given the push by a wide variety of women.
This is the point where I might have turned a transphobe. If all that confusion and heartbreak turned outward, into anger and denial, it could solidify into bigotry and hate. But it didn’t. I am not complaining, but I do sometimes wonder why not. And why is it that so many people are vitriolically, even violently, transphobic, despite never actually interacting with a trans person in real life, ever? I feel like I am missing some insight here.
