Trans People Are Not All The Same. Let's Face It. | Trans Realist #7

Refusing to acknowledge our differences is hurting us in many ways.

Welcome back to Trans Realist, a project where I have a conversation with my fellow trans people, about what could be done to make our lives better in the real world.

Today, I want to talk about another controversial topic: the fact that not all trans people are the same, or even similar, in our experiences, and the way our gender identity developed. The denial of this fact, the reluctance to talk about it, has caused various unexpected consequences: non-trans people turning to the Blanchard typology to understand us, some trans people feeling excluded from the trans community, and some even finding refuge in anti-trans gender critical philosophy, to name a few. I know that some people think that unity is everything, and everything done in the name of unity is justified. But this artificial unity based on denying our differences clearly isn't working.

The trans community has its own historical problems with hierarchy, gatekeeping and exclusion. I guess this is why a taboo against talking about our differences developed. But now that trans issues have gone mainstream, it is unsustainable, because even the non-trans people out there can see that we are not all the same. The trans community's refusal to provide an account of our differences has led some people to seek out unsound theory like the Blanchard typology, because it at least tries to explain the vast differences seen among trans people. Quite a few people have actually told me that this is the exact reason they came to be interested in Blanchard's theory. It's bad news for the trans community, because if people are turning to the Blanchard typology, it would hinder them from developing a proper understanding of trans people and gender dysphoria. This is why, if we don't honestly explore the differences among trans people, others will do it for us, and it will be in a way that is unsound and unfair to trans people.

Another problem with the refusal to acknowledge differences is that a vague, one-size-fits-all narrative is all that is left, and many trans people themselves find it unsatisfactory to explain their condition. Many trans people, especially when they are done with the initial stages of transition, start searching everywhere for a satisfactory explanation of how their life has turned out, being unable to find it in the conformity of the trans community. I guess this is why some trans people end up embracing gender critical philosophy, despite its inherent anti-trans attitude. Some even end up being spokespeople for the gender critical movement. Trans activists like to label them as self-hating people who have betrayed the community. But could it be the truth instead, to say that the trans community failed them in the first place?

Another thing is, in my own experience, under the cover of the vague one-size-fits-all philosophy, the trans community is often more welcoming to some narratives than others. For example, the mainstream narrative of the trans community is skewed towards those who became aware of being trans after puberty or in young adulthood. This is the reason why 'egg culture' is a thing. To be honest, I don't understand 'egg culture' any more than cis people do. This is because I have felt trans for as long as I have known gender. In other words, I didn't have an 'egg' to 'crack' in the first place. Instead, the development of my gender identity was largely intertwined with my childhood experiences. For this reason, I've often felt like I've been sort of 'left out' of the trans community. The subtle exclusion of so-called 'early onset' trans people is basically intra-trans discrimination, and it needs to end. Without being able to talk about the differences between 'early onset' and 'later onset' gender dysphoria, we are unable to even speak about the existence of this exclusion, let alone change it.