Return to Self: A gender affirmation learning resource

Fae:

This photo I have is my favourite photo in the world. I have it on my phone because sometimes it's just nice to remember. I'm four years old. I had been invited to a birthday party. All the girls were going to dress up as fairies and all the boys were not going to dress up at all. I wanted to do what the girls were doing.

I think for me, gender affirmation feels like a return to self. My mom says, "You're the same person you've always been." When someone else recognises who you are like that, it's one of the best feelings. So still the same girl, just more tattoos.

Ari Heart:

“Gender affirmation feels like a return to self”. Fae made this statement and it's one of the most important things to understand about trans people and about transition. And if you take one thing from this training, let it be this. Trans people are not changing, but returning, to who they already knew themselves to be. Or revealing something important about themselves. Not becoming something different, but becoming more of who they already are.

Andy Perfors:

That insight alone speaks to the root of so many other misunderstandings about transitioning and gender. Exactly what Fae articulated. Once you realise that it's about a return to self, about being authentic as who you are, not changing who you are or not performing, then the rest of it falls into place.

Ari Heart:

If someone was to say to you, "What was it like to become a man?" What does that feel like?

Andy Perfors:

I mean, I guess I have two simultaneous interpretations of what they're asking. One is, what did it feel like to have society and people suddenly interact with you as though you were a man? And that's actually quite a shift and that is something I feel like I can answer. But the other meaning, the implicit meaning, which is that I have changed inside. It's like… error! We're just not sharing premises. And also it's incredibly confounded anyways. My internal experience of transitioning was not feeling more like a man but feeling less miserable and just like I could finally be myself and I didn't have a giant weight on my back. That's why people calling us by the right pronouns matters so much. It's because it's a signal that you are being seen.

Fae:

My dad, when I first came out, had a lot of trouble misgendering me and using my old name. He would always correct himself, but it still wasn't coming very naturally. It sort of feels like I've just discovered this incredible thing about myself that is making me feel happier than I've ever felt in my whole life. It takes so long to accept if this is who I am, it's not going to be easy. You have to work yourself up to being like, "Okay, we're doing this." And then for someone to sort of meet that with confusion saying, "That's really inconvenient for me. That's actually too hard." It wasn't that I was ever angry that he didn't get it right. It was just sort of ... It just hurt.

We ended up having this argument at the airport when I was about to catch a plane as the plane was boarding. I said, "You think that I want you to use she/her pronouns with me, and that you're scared of messing that up, and that I'll be angry at you?" And he said, "Yes." And I said, "I can tell that you don't really think I'm a woman." And he sort of didn't have anything to say about that. And I said, "I think it'll be easier if instead of trying to get my pronouns right, you think that I'm a woman. And if you think that I'm a woman, the pronouns will be easy to do actually. I'm not asking you to do this because I want you to. I'm asking you to do it because it's true.”

I got on the plane, and he hasn't misgendered me since, which is really nice.

Ari Heart:

What Fae is describing here says something important about gender, but it's also about connection and belonging - things that we can all relate to.

Maybe think of a moment in your life when you told someone something significant about yourself. It probably took courage to say that thing. How important in that moment was that person's response to you?

When something feels deeply true about us, having that recognised by other people allows us to feel safe, connected, and like we belong. And this applies in every context across our lives, whether it be our relationships, workplaces, or our classrooms. And the more important that relationship or context is to us, the more that recognition matters.

We can think about this using a simple model. On one side, we have our experience of self - who we know ourselves to be. And on the other side, we have how other people perceive us — how we are recognised and understood in the world. When these two experiences are close, we tend to feel understood and connected and when there's distance, it has consequences for our wellbeing, our belonging, our capacity to focus on the things that we want to do.

It's important to notice that this is a universal dynamic. Everyone experiences this in some way. But for trans people, when they experience misgendering, this can create a sudden and intense distance between the person's experience of self and how others are perceiving them, or expressing their perception.

Gender affirmation, as Fae described it earlier, is the process of returning to or revealing of self, and then having that self recognised by others. That recognition is expressed primarily through language, through things like names and pronouns, how we talk to and about each other. And when that alignment is present, gender can become less of a focus over time. People then can simply get on with their work or their study or their lives - and that is ultimately the goal.

Fae:

Affirmation is something that's sort of smaller for me now and less of a big deal. When I first came out, I was thinking about it all the time. Being perceived by others, I don't really think about that at all anymore, which is a huge relief.