Gender Criticals, Stay in Your Lane

When I regained the capacity to feel, I found myself awash in the strongest feelings of my life.

And I’m tired.

I’m trans, and there is nothing socially constructed about the person inside me. Period.

There is nothing a perfect world — completely free of sexism or hierarchy or oppression of any kind — could do to make me comfortably a woman. Period.

There is nothing — not the antidepressants I needed as a teenager, not therapy, not being privileged or beautiful or outwardly successful, not having a proper balance of female hormones —nothing comparable to the mental and spiritual miracle that transitioning has performed on me. Period.

There is nothing — nothing you can do or say or be radically feminist about — nothing that would magically change the little guy in my head into anything other than who and what I am: a human male. Period.

And I am tired — fucking tired — of gender critical rhetoric and just how oblivious it can be to something so much deeper than “social constructs.”

This isn’t about how I’m treated (although that certainly comes into play); it’s about my mind and my default self-image and the very essence of my being, when nobody else is in the room.

This isn’t about expression (although that would certainly make things easier). It’s about identity, at its core.

This isn’t about the outside (although the outside can certainly be a formidable and unforgiving place). It’s about the inside, and he’s been here the whole time.

If your inside matches your outside — congratulations! You can be still and exist and feel grounded and ordinary and human without some accompanying abyss or mental sludge— and you probably take it for granted.

Your body is probably just…your body, and even if you hate some things about it, you probably take the “your” part for granted.

Your essence — whether you believe in a soul or just the interplay of your neurons — fits into your body and/or how the world responds to it, and you probably take that for granted as you fight vocally and rightfully against external oppressors instead.

But don’t — don’t for a second — believe there is anything external you or a perfect world can do to replace the hormone my brain needs.

It’s really that simple, and I wish I could magically place you into my mental space, before and after.