When Will I Stop Doubting That I’m Really Trans?
I know for sure that I’m trans, but my brain keeps trying to convince me I’m faking it.
On some level, I’ve known that I’m trans for many years. I’ve started to get used to the new name that I’ve been going by for almost a year now. I recently came out to several members of the “cool” side of my family, and I’m preparing to come out at work.
Yet why is it that, when I dream, I’m always, always a cisgender girl?
In my dreams, people call me by my old name. I wear fairly feminine clothing and have long hair. There’s still a nagging feeling in the back of my mind that something about my gender isn’t right, but I can’t quite pinpoint the reason why.
Many of these dreams even involve a romantic meet-cute with a random cis straight man. Sometimes it’s someone my mind made up, sometimes it’s someone I went to school with and barely talked to, and sometimes it’s a male YouTuber I admire.
The thing is, I’m almost certainly not attracted to men. But because I present as a woman in these dreams, I apparently also have to present as a straight woman.
Compulsory heterosexuality is no joke.
But I digress.
When will I start having dreams where I’m a trans man/nonbinary person/whatever the hell my gender actually is?
I’m far from the only person to doubt they’re really trans, even after years and years of gender dysphoria.
I think the main reason why trans doubt is so pervasive is that our society does all that it can to prevent trans people from actually transitioning (read: existing).
In a culture where being cis is the norm, all other beliefs to the contrary will be quashed. A cisnormative society will try to snuff trans people out of existence, to keep us from being our true selves. They’ll bash you over the head with the message that you’re not really trans. That it’s just a phase. That you’ll change your mind later after you’ve already done permanent “damage” to your body.
So even after feeling a strange disconnect between the gender I’m seen as and the gender I really am — and after consciously recognizing this disconnect several years ago — part of me keeps thinking that I’m not actually trans.
It doesn’t matter that I’ve been deeply uncomfortable being referred to as a girl since I was old enough to understand what the word “girl” meant. It doesn’t matter that throughout my life I’ve often gravitated toward other trans people without my (or their) knowing it yet. It doesn’t matter that I’ve been internally debating whether I was trans or just a tomboy for almost a decade now.
Ever since I learned about the existence of trans people (outside of the typical man-in-a-dress jokes in media), and the term “gender dysphoria” in particular, I haven’t been able to shake the feeling that I’m trans. And still, I doubt myself.
Maybe it just takes several years of questioning your gender and repressing it repeatedly to the point where you have severe depression-related mental health crises to realize that you’ve been faking being trans this whole time.
Maybe living as a “woman” for a quarter of a century gives you all of these “womanly” experiences that obligate you to feel some sort of solidarity with womanhood.
Maybe I’m just cashing in on the trend of so many “girls” these days coming out as trans — despite feeling discomfort with all things feminine long before I’d ever heard of trans people.
Yet I have never, not even once, felt this way about any other trans person besides myself. Trans doubt is the kind of thing you only feel about yourself.
But when does it go away?
Maybe it will once I start hormone therapy or get top surgery or legally change my name and gender marker. But until then, I’m going to have to wrestle with this monstrous self-doubt about who I truly am.
It’s something I wouldn't wish on anyone.
