Off Trend

Why would a cis person identify as trans?

This post is part 1 of a collection of posts aimed at answering the question “Why would a cis person identify as trans?” These posts are collected here.

The problem with the internet

It’s human nature to want to belong. To have a “tribe” that you feel you fit in with. In an increasingly online world that only serves to distance us from meaningful interaction, it can be far too easy to slip in to a rut of loneliness – and it’s a vicious cycle. The less connected you feel to other people, the more you seek connection online. Given that the current misinformation about transsexualism and gender was created online, is proliferated online, and thrives online, it can be far too easy to slip down an algorithmic rabbit hole without even realising you’ve done so. You watch one video by a trans-identified cis person and get ten more put in front of you, and each one is saying, “Anyone can be trans if they identify as trans” (i.e. “You can belong to – and be accepted by – our group if you’re willing to shift your mindset a little.”). To someone who just wants a sense of community, that can be an appealing prospect. Given that, according to the current trans trend, you don’t even need to change anything – you can keep your birth name and pronouns, present entirely as your birth sex, make no effort to mask your birth sex characteristics, and still be embraced by a community who will love-bomb you simply for saying “I’m trans” – it’s so easy for someone who’s not too sure of themselves and feeling a bit disconnected from the world to just say, “Okay then, I’ll join your group.” 

A prime example of the desire to belong is fraternity hazing in U.S. colleges. Young men will literally put their lives at risk in order to gain approval of people they admire, a sense of belonging, a perceived advantage (connections, opportunities) in later life, a label, and friends. Trans-identified cis people, though, don’t have any of the dangerous initiation rituals that would otherwise put them off (and no, I’m not saying dangerous initiation rituals are a good thing!) and any risks to their health/lives seem so distant as to be almost non-existent.

As I’ve said before, when you have no comprehension of what gender dysphoria feels like, it’s easy to mislabel certain gender-related discomforts as “dysphoria”, pursue a medical path that – while you’re pursuing it – cements your sense of belonging to the group you’ve placed yourself in, only to realise (often after years spent cementing your identity and connection to the trans community) that you never had dysphoria in the first place – but now you do. Just like the young men who will go to extreme lengths to belong, trans-identified cis people will put their mental health and possibly even lives (not to mention those of trans people) at risk in exchange for a community that embraces them – and in both cases, the community they seek out can be incredibly toxic.

Given that the trans trend is particularly popular now, it’s far easier for people – particularly young people, who are most at risk of social isolation, social pressure, online misinformation, and lack of awareness of their own hubris and sense of indestructibility – to find online communities that will immediately and completely embrace them, than it is for them to find (and tolerate) real-life, non-trans-focused communities, especially considering the fact that real-life communities rarely offer a prompt, unearned celebration of the individual in the way that “trans” communities do.

Even when young people do seek out in-person social groups, they are met with overwhelming lack of affordable options. Either your family can pay for your membership to a hobby group (e.g. an orchestra, a sports team, an art class), or you’re left to your own devices – literally and metaphorically. There are so few female-only online and in-person social groups that exist for girls and women who want to fight for gender equality in a way that empowers them, but there are a comparatively vast number of online and in-person social groups for “trans-identified” people. It’s not hard to see why so many girls and women are drawn to the “trans” community; its false narrative of being a feminist cause fighting for gender equality (rather than the reality of it being rooted in transphobia and misogyny in a way that reinforces the same social gender stereotypes that caused those people to feel “not female” in the first place) fills the void of true gender-equality focused groups. They want to find a sense of belonging and a sense of purpose, but the options – especially regarding gender politics – that are given to them are largely trans-focused.

Many of those people have been directed, by an algorithm, to an online community that helps shape their new, misappropriated, hurtful trans identity, and from there, many of those people have sourced a real-life community which in turn has only reinforced that identity. An online identity is harmful enough, but when it starts to enter the real world, it becomes so much harder to undo. Worse still, cis people can actually meet their needs for belonging and camaraderie from almost anywhere – online and offline -, but trans people can’t get social support for their dysphoria and guidance from other trans people in any space other than trans spaces (which is why trans spaces were created in the first place). The one community trans people used to have for support and safety has largely been eroded by cis people’s desire for belonging in a world that – were those cis people to delete social media and spend some time in the real world – would provide that sense of community and support to them with relatively few challenges.

The chosen few

As someone who has spent a lot of time in “trans” (i.e. trans-identified cis majority) communities, I can say with some certainty that there is an element of cultishness about them. While genuine trans people don’t consider themselves to be in any way better than cis people, trans-identified cis people often do. In “trans” communities, cis people are criticised as being boring, intolerant, entitled, and stupid – among many other things. Cis folk are mocked for their perceived lack of understanding about trans issues, for making reasonable mistakes or assumptions, and for their perceived lack of interesting qualities – often by trans-identified cis people who often refuse to try and understand the true transsexual experience, who make reasonable mistakes and assumptions but choose not to listen when someone calls them out on it, and who make their trans identity their entire personality.

These narratives were created by trans-identified cis people who were trying to deflect their own insecurities – likely induced and/or worsened by witnessing the espousing of those narratives from people whose approval they desire. It’s a self-perpetuating cycle; insecure cis people criticise cis people so that other insecure cis people feel bad for being cis and want to start identifying as trans so that they can say “I’m not like all those bad cis people!” rather than making the effort to prove that cis people are not inherently bad or boring. An additional irony lies in the fact that, when trans-identified cis people dismiss the trans people who call them out on their misappropriated identity, they are demonstrating many of the qualities that they criticise other cis people for; the arrogance of believing that they know everything, the intolerance towards experiences they cannot understand, the entitlement to speak over oppressed people, the refusal to engage with evidence. Simply identifying as trans does not erase the privileges of being cis.

A lot of these narratives – along with pretty much the whole modern trans trend – started on Tumblr. An initial desire to be respectful of oppressed minorities quickly morphed in to a kind of fanaticism that, rather than viewing oppressed minorities as equal, elevated trans people to a superior status. Amongst the trans fanaticism were countless posts about how much “hotter” trans people are, how cis people are boring and ignorant – some even claimed evil -, how trans people have more “interesting” life stories and bodies, how trans men make better (straight) boyfriends because they can relate to being a woman (we can’t, by the way – because we’re men).

Social psychologist Mark Leary posited the Sociometer theory, which suggests that we develop a sense of where we fall within our chosen community’s prestige rankings. When we sense that our prestige is dropping – that people are disliking us for one reason or another – internal alarm bells are triggered to produce an anxiety that pushes us to change our behaviour in order to climb back up the rankings. I’ve never seen this theory played out more clearly than in the early online trans-identified cis community, particularly on Tumblr. For young people seeking a sense of approval and identity, seeing these posts about how boring/oppressive/evil straight, white, able-bodied cis people are makes them feel as though they are slipping down their preferred (online) community’s “ranks”, simply for being born with privileges they cannot control. Anxiety takes over and they start to look at how best they can fit in with the group that’s receiving praise, rather than persist in the group that’s being – for the most part – needlessly and harshly criticised. Combined with the then-contemporary emerging early trans trenders’ (who have since detransitioned) newly-minted narratives that gender is a social construct and anyone can identify however they want, being trans became the best option for privileged cis people to gain the favour of their chosen online community and quell some of that sociometer-induced anxiety. Suddenly, you don’t need to have been born trans and experienced a lifetime of gender dysphoria to be seen as interesting and attractive, you can just say you’re trans and you’ll be not just accepted but actively celebrated by the people whose approval you seek. When you’re young and vulnerable, that kind of social approval can be a strong driving force. And when you have all the privilege that comes with being cis, you won’t think twice about how your new trans identity affects those with dysphoria.

Much like the cult member who just wants to belong somewhere and feel special, cis people are drawn in to the trans community by that same appeal. And much like that same cult member, they’re never really provided with an honest account of where this group-belief of specialness came from.

A system of oppression

I should clarify that this isn’t a criticism of the people who are in the trans-identified cis community so much as it is a criticism of the people who started it. The cult-like thinking, the glorification of oppressed people, the overwhelmingly aggressive silencing of trans people who challenged it – it all got normalised so long ago that now, cis people don’t know how the system that makes them feel entitled to a presence in trans spaces began. It’s no different to the men who get offended when called out on misogyny; they’re unaware of how much they’ve benefited from a system that favours them, they can’t imagine a life where they don’t have power over women, and feel as though being called out by people who are most affected by their ignorance is an attack on who they are as a person rather than a criticism of the system that enabled their behaviour and beliefs. Privilege, cultural bias, and ego are such huge barriers to progress and they are as prevalent in the modern “trans” communities as they are in “men’s rights” communities.

While those barriers are obviously a problem, the only personal criticism that can exist is that of the individuals who learn of their misinformed, harmful belief system and refuse to acknowledge it or challenge themselves. The current “trans” community has always done a good job at making sure as few people as possible get a fair understanding of transsexualism and transmedicalism, so many cis people are bumbling along with a trans identity and no idea of the damage it’s doing to genuine trans people. It’s meeting their need for a sense of belonging to a community, but it’s a belonging that hinges on the exclusion and endangerment of the people who created the community in the first place.