A: Being trans doesn’t commit you to anything, aside from the claim that you belong to a gender category different from the one that everyone assumed you belonged to when you were born. Different trans people have different reasons for transitioning, and different understandings of what transition means in their lives.
But we often have to explain ourselves in settings where the cis people around us, with simplistic views, assume that gender essentialism is true. Sometimes these cis people have power over our access to goods like healthcare. Just as the movement for marriage equality rely on the simplistic claim that sexual orientation is innate, trans people fighting for our rights sometimes rely on the simplistic claim that we were “born in the wrong body,” because it’s the easiest way to communicate a complex reality to the people around us.
Further reading
- Ozy Frantz, Lies to Cis People
- Natalie Reed, Trapped In A (Wo)Man’s Body and Born This Way (Reprise): The New Essentialism
A Trans 101 Blog 