I’m trans. British politicians, journalists and sports regulators say I don’t exist. But my 81 year old Mum disagreed.
I transitioned - that's the process of finally starting to live in public in the gender I knew myself to be - 15 years ago. If you are cisgender - that is when the gender you were assigned at birth fits you just fine and you've never questioned it inside - you're possibly going to be struggling right there. Certainly, if you live in Britain or in many parts of the Mid-Western or Southern US you're going to find plenty of people around you (perhaps you are one yourself?) who'd respond to what I have just written by saying 'Wait, that's just rubbish. That notion of being a gender inside that isn't what got written on your birth certificate isn't even a thing is it! ?' Perhaps they - or you - think it's some sort of ideology - a web of lunatic theory that some pseudo-academic came up with about 20 years ago - into which I have plunged? An 'ism' of some kind? I could point out that the experience I went through has been experienced in ...