Transing away the boy
One of the issues Hilary Cass asserted in her recent report was the potential transing of gay, lesbian, and bisexual children through transition. This in turn was picked up by writers such as Helen Joyce, Hannah Barnes, and the LGB Alliance in their anti-trans activism. What was forgotten by all of these writers is both that many trans people are queer to some degree and that sexuality and gender are two separate parts of a person’s identity. Yes, some trans people in countries such as Iran are potentially transed due to their sexuality being a death sentence and should rightly be critiqued. However, the whole concept of transing queer kids does not stand up to scrutiny on a meta international level. Where Cass falls down, and where gender critical voices fail to illuminate, is the fact that when we transition trans people often are either forced or choose to trans away their prior lives, as if acknowledging our prior identities somehow undermines who we exist as now.
Much of this process stems from the historic gatekeeping of trans medicine and trans identities, especially the fact that being trans was treated as a stigma in societal discourse. To be trans was to be inherently flawed and broken, so admitting to a trans history and a cisgendered past was seen as verboten by gender clinicians even into the early 2000s. That you could take pride in your prior gendered past and have no dissonance with it was…
