Are you a man or a woman?

Someone says to a transgender person "but you were born a man!" and my head wants to explode. No one is born a man or a woman, but instead male or female with the added non-negligible array of intersex conditions and ambiguous genitalia which leaves us unable to instantly pick a binary designation at birth. All this because nature abhors uniformity. 

Guest post by Joanna Santos

It turns out the perfect binary never truly existed but the idea was created and maintained to suppress any natural human gradations found everywhere else in biological processes. 

If we base ourselves exclusively on science this perfect binary isn't real. It was a cultural artifact where religious leaders and the ruling class could have the predictability they needed, and for most people it worked if imperfectly. 

Tolerance or intolerance?

Many native cultures have tolerated and even embraced those who exhibited gender variance. Others, more steeped in orthodoxy, fought it vigorously as it contradicted dogma that couldn't contain flexibility. 

People in those latter cultures with the most need to transition, were obliged as much as possible into stealth. Even variations of expression were discouraged to the point of physical arrest and incarceration well into the 20th century. 

From “Ideology” to “Mutilization”: Trump’s War on Trans People

 Donald Trump is now using the made-up word "mutilization" to generate support for his transphobic policies. The real reason is not any threat from trans people.

Photo: Getty

Does this Trumpian nonsense matter? It does. The point is to repeatedly associate the term transgender with "transgender ideology" and now "mutilization" (or "mutilation", which is proper English and at term used by the Attorney General), and do this to the point were weak minds immediately make the same association every time the topic of transgender rights comes up.

A related catchphrase is "Transgender for Everybody":

“They’re fighting for men in women’s sports. They’re fighting for transgender for everybody,” Trump has said. “Everybody go out, get your kid a nice operation, and change the sex of your kid.”

Trump is not very smart, but he is good at one thing: bullying. He knows exactly what buttons to push in order to mobilize the hatred of the masses in such a way that their feelings forward his interests.

The main objective here is not to harm trans people per se. Trump was not a rabid anti-trans activist before he decided to become a fascist dictator. The goal is to use transphobia to distract Americans from the Epstein files, the tanking economy and the Iran war.

There seems to be one thing most Americans do agree on: You should not abuse children.

Sure, a lot of right wingers traumatize their queer children all the time, but in their twisted minds this is not abuse, but protection. But you must, as an American politician, never be seen as someone who harms kids.

Trauma and self realization among older transgender people

Older transgender people can suffer from trauma and suppressed anger issues stemming from needing to hide and face rejection from family, friends and society as a whole. The roots of this trauma can sometimes date back to very early in childhood. 

Guest Post by Joanna Santos

Having grown up under a rigid binary where their identity was forced underground often meant dealing with internalized transphobia while trying to adapt within the framework of a society that didn't suit them. 

This trauma can be insidious and is often forced into hiding under layers of life distractions which can mask it. The underlying turmoil can then surface with a vengeance later on in life which is often referred to as the "cracking of our egg". Even someone who may have achieved a certain level of early self-acceptance still faced huge challenges attaining a peaceful and harmonious existence. 

Dealing with this underlying trauma can be delayed but not indefinitely and once major life distractions fall away with age there is no place to hide from it. 

Avoidance and reflection

We human beings have immense talent for deflecting and avoiding hard questions dealing with their psychological obstacles. We use methods which can work for a time such as plunging into career, focus on raising children. Sometimes we aid the subterfuge by indulging substance abuse habits, overeating, or some other method of distraction. 

Metacognition is the exercise of thinking about our thinking. It is about focusing on our beliefs and placing them under a microscope to check their veracity. We examine preconceived notions about our own natures to hopefully reveal some inner truth which may have been masked via our early indoctrination. 

On the nonbinary God, politics and culture war

Texas State Representative James Talarico (D), who is now hoping to become a blue senator from a very red state, is doubling down on his support for transgender people.

“We are all focused on the wrong 1%,” he recently told MS NOW. “Trans people aren’t taking away our healthcare. Undocumented people aren’t defunding our schools… It’s the billionaires and their puppet politicians. And so we need not only the media, but all of us, to focus on the real problem at hand.”

So what has this to do with the gender of God? Well, Talarico has been very good at making viral videos, and the Republicans are now digging up old videos they think will harm him. In one of these videos he says - in defense of nonbinary and trans people - that God is nonbinary.

The political connotations of the term "nonbinary" aside, I know of no serious religious scholars or theologians - being those Christian, Muslim or Jewish - who would argue that God is male only. To the extent the creator of the universe has a gender aspect, that would include all genders, for sure. 

(The exception from this rule is found among the Mormons or Latter Day Saints, who argue that "the Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s," but I neither have the time nor the patience to go into that here.)

Gender Euphoria and Gender Dysphoria: Two Sides of the Same Coin

Exploring the gender variance and how it is expressed through gender euphoria and gender dysphoria

Guest post by Joanna Santos

Gender euphoria is the feeling of alignment and joy when we are in congruence with the aspects of gender and its expression we most want to reinforce. It can happen when either masculine or feminine traits are amplified and experienced most fully leading to harmony. This feeling can bring us closer to identity particularly when we might be otherwise forced to suppress in everyday life. 

Conversely, gender dysphoria is the experience of being denied harmony which can lead to anxiety and incongruence sometimes to the point of rejecting traits of the physical body. 

Most people have experienced some version of euphoria but the most virulent versions of dysphoria seem to be reserved for a tiny fraction of the gender variant population and most often requires therapy and medical treatment. 

The transgender backlash and what to do about it

Recent political data and public opinion research indicate that a backlash against transgender rights is getting stronger, particularly in the United States.

The reason for this is intense anti-trans propaganda from the Republicans and the failure of pro-democracy politicians to protect and defend trans people.

Shifting support

According to a US survey presented and analyzed by Lakshya Jain in The Argument, measures once widely opposed, such as bills requiring transgender people to use bathrooms corresponding to their sex assigned at birth, now has the support of a majority of voters, with about 52 % backing such legislation and only 33 % opposing it.

Similar trends are found in sports, where over 60% of voters favor restricting trans athletes to teams based on sex assigned at birth.

The polling also finds strong opposition to gender‑affirming care for minors, including puberty blockers, hormones, and surgeries, even when supported by doctors and parents.

The effect of anti-trans propaganda

Even if many of the anti-trans bills presented by Republicans in various states fail or are stopped in the courts, the extreme propaganda targeting transgender people has had an effect.

A majority of Americans do not known that much about transgender people, gender variance or gender dysphoria. The support trans people had up till 2024 might partly have been caused by a sympathy for marginalized people in general and LGBTQ people in particular.