Beyond The Binary: Fostering a Healthy Gender Journey

Addressing “health” in relation to the trans experience feels kind of like answering a loaded question.

It’s hard to give out some neatly-packaged wisdom on how to foster your mental health as a trans person when many of us can’t afford therapy to process the trauma we might have endured (or be enduring) through our lives, or even just a queer-affirming party who can help us to sort out our experiences

That doesn’t even cover the slew of anti-trans bills hitting states across the country, not to mention the fact that some of them are passing, and how that affects our mental well-being.

We also can’t pretend optimal physical health is something that all trans people can just go and seek out. Many trans people can’t afford the medical procedures to feel affirmed in their gender, and others are not in living situations where they can safely live out and proud, which takes a mental toll.

There are also abundant intersections of experience that further exasperate this conversation within our trans community.

I am a trans person who is still learning how to foster this conversation with myself. I’ve known I’m nonbinary for a long time, but I’ve only been fully out for a little over a year, much of that spent alone and processing it by myself, with the help of my writing, reading, the internet, and a very limited digital and IRL trans community.

Though, in trying to figure out a “healthy” middle ground in traversing the world in my newly embraced transness, I will say I’ve learned a lot about keeping myself, my thinking, and my gender journey the most productive it can be. My focus is typically around what I can control, and obviously I can only speak in the scope of my own experience.

One thing I had to learn very quickly about my gender and the way people perceive it is that there are always going to be people who don’t understand, or who are actively working against understanding. To a certain extent, I had to sort out the people whom I cared that “got it” and whom I didn’t. 

On the other side, I also implore folks to remember that you don’t owe anyone an explanation on your gender. I often found, during those first few months of living out, I would over-explain to people, as if I had to prove my gender and how I felt about it. 

Anymore, I often just limit it to, “Yeah, I’m nonbinary, and I use they/them pronouns.” That’s all people need to know. They don’t need to know my entire relationship to my gender, and if they ask, I’m not entitled to answer. I mean, are cis people expected to give us a dissertation on why they’re cis every time their manhood or womanhood comes up?

I can be a pretty impassioned speaker about these topics, and often spoke up on issues within the trans and nonbinary community on TikTok last year, opening myself up to a flood of comments from people essentially throwing quick jabs at me, my gender, my queerness.

While I surely spent a good amount of time initially replying to those comments initially (and pain-stakingly arguing with hateful strangers online), I eventually decided that if the other party doesn’t want to actually engage in a productive conversation, it’s probably not a conversation I want to be a part of.

This marries itself to my next bit of advice: Take a step back when you need it.

I actually don’t use TikTok anymore. There’s a number of reasons why, but one is surely because, any time I went live, or any video that got remotely popular (especially about topics related to gender and sexuality) the content also found its way to people who were more interested in berating me and whatever it was that I said in the video.

As much as I appreciated the LGBTQ folks I met on the app and the community I fostered, I found it exhausting inviting some of the most scathing transphobic and queerphobic comments I’ve ever received into my life on a regular basis.

I think about my role as associate editor here at OFM, in which I’m often writing about or assigning content about the worst things that happened to queer and trans folks that week. It’s heavy. When I get done with my day, I’m not always racing to my news app to double down or do a 15-second standup on my story about the latest anti-trans legislation and why my cis friends should care. 

The trans community continually advocates for ourselves and our livelihoods, and as much as our voices are needed, it is exhausting. We also can’t fully do it on our own. (Hey cis folks, that’s your cue to speak up if you’re not already!) What I know for sure is that we won’t have the continued energy to keep up this fight if we wear ourselves out constantly engaging in the trans violence surrounding us.

My resounding thought on a “healthy” outlook for trans people, and really anyone, is giving yourself the grace to grow or change your identity however it naturally happens. As much as we don’t love to admit it, the LGBTQ community can sometimes feel very sectioned off and divided by those individual letters. It can feel intimidating when you have lived in a certain way for a while and realize, “Wait a second; I don’t feel that way anymore.”

As I’ve been able to sit with this part of myself openly, or address it in forums like this, over that time, I’ll admit: I’m more affirmed in my gender than ever, but my perception of my own gender has already shifted from that initial coming out day. Often, I don’t even bother to try to explain it all to myself because I feel like I constantly learn new things about my gender and identity, or even how my lived experience as a boy and man throughout my life may or may not inform some of those elements, whether I want them to or not.

People are far too complex to remain stagnant and unchanged throughout their entire lives. I want to have space for whatever changes come in the future, and it’s OK that I might not know what that looks like right now.

It hearkens back to that true magic in being queer and trans, that ability to completely morph and shift into your best self, sometimes in ways you may not even expect.

To my trans community, I love you so much. I am in awe of us. We are in the midst, and at the forefront, of a major shift in understanding around gender and identity. We have to watch out for each other, and we must watch out for ourselves.