14. False claims that trans people are fake

 

The claim that trans people are 'fake' is a hateful smear and slur that is promoted by those who seek to demean the lived reality and integrity of trans women and trans men. Gender-critical feminists allege that we are just acting, and that we are fake women. The opposite is true. For years before transition, that's when many trans people felt fake: trying to act out a role and identity that society said we should when, inside we were psychologically in deep distress, hiding behind an incongruent pretence of a gender at odds with who we knew ourselves to be.

In the end, that kind of performance can lead to the fragmentation of a person's life. The cost of performance outside your true self can be devastating. As author of this site I can testify to the decades where that fake life led to self-harm and the strangling of the true person inside. But when I transitioned, that's when the fakery ended. Such a psychological ease came flooding into my life: a healing, a sense of wholeness, and well-being. So many years of harm to myself just disappeared, and I became a nurse and flourished. Today my life is happy, I'm deeply loved, and I try to be the whole and best of who I am.

I am sad that hateful people frame trans people as 'fakes' and 'predators' and threats'. We are not the ones with 'ideology'. The vast majority of us are just trying to live decent, caring lives. It's who we really are.