If there’s one thing I want everyone to understand about trans people, it’s this:
Trans people live—or strive to live—their lives as themselves.
Trans women live as women. Trans men live as men. Nonbinary people cover a broad spectrum, but they all just want to be able to be themselves in every facet of their lives.
There is no “pretending” here. There is no “lying”. Sometimes there is experimenting or trying things out to help figure out who they really are, but that’s still experimentation, not falsehood.
There’s this narrative from a lot of places, not least of which being our current federal administration, that trans people are acting out some false identity. That narrative is the exact opposite of reality.
Trans people are trying to be themselves in the face of a world that has told them, since birth, who it thinks they should be. In many cases, trans people’s understanding of themselves is very hard-won. It can take years or even decades to reconcile the internal feeling of who you are with the external pressures to be someone else.
It is a testament to the truth of trans identities that so many people have stood up to that world and said, “I am who I know myself to be, not who you say I am, and in spite of you saying it to me throughout my entire life.” It is a shadow over our society that many other trans people have been driven to suppress that identity—to lie about themselves in order to fit into the world—or to end their lives rather than have to choose between the lie of conformity and a truth that would leave them ostracized and isolated.
Trans people just want to live the truth of their own identities.