6 ways to know if you're transgender, according to Schuyler Bailar

The following is an excerpt from Schuyler Bailar’s new book He/She/They: How We Talk About Gender and Why It Matters, on sale now. Bailar is an educator, author and advocate, as well as the first transgender athlete to compete in any sport on an NCAA Division 1 men’s team. His work has earned numerous honors, including NYC Pride Grand Marshall, the Out100, LGBTQ Nation’s Instagram Advocate of the Year and the Harvard Varsity Director’s Award.

One morning during the second month of my stay at the residential eating disorder treatment facility, I was on my way to the therapy center. I was wearing my “man jeans” — the one pair of jeans I had bought from the men’s section at the time. They had a tie-dyed pattern of aqua blue and light green. I looked down at my lap and legs as we drove and felt overwhelmingly negative toward my body. I tried to use the coping mechanisms my therapist had taught me about body disconnection and body dissatisfaction.

Why am I feeling this way? I asked myself. I also tried reframing, reminding myself that there was nothing wrong with my body. I thought about all that my body does for me and began repeating gratitude statements.

But then a question began burning in the back of my mind: “What if I don’t like how I look because I don’t look like a man?” And in that moment, my stomach turned and everything sank. I knew.

This knowing was a mapping of language and articulation to feeling — a feeling I’d had for as long as I could remember gender, one that had been nebulous until that moment. If I was honest with myself then, I knew unequivocally that I am transgender.

Over the coming years, I’d realize that this feeling and knowing was not situated in my jeans and how they fit me. In fact, contrary to popular belief about us, being transgender is not solely about one’s body and one’s physicality. For many, including myself, being transgender is a spiritual, emotional, as well as physical experience.

Of course, realizing that I was transgender in that moment did not immediately translate into words or declaration of identity. It most definitely did not mean I was ready for disclosure or teaching others about my experience. Like most of us, I needed time to let my brain catch up to my heart. In the coming months, I would meet more trans people, go to a few more gender workshops, and spend time digesting what it would mean to claim my truth for myself … and then in front of others. In finding community, I would continue to accumulate the language to understand and explain myself — something I am deeply grateful for today.

While some trans people feel that coming out is discovering a completely new part of themselves, for a majority of trans people, “coming out” is less a process of becoming something new than an unearthing of a part of ourselves we’ve buried, finally finding the words to express who we’ve always been.

When I came out as transgender, I did not become a new person. I did not become transgender. I did not change who I was. Instead, I found the language, courage, and resources to share who I’ve always been. I have always been transgender and I’ve always been a boy. I just haven’t always been able to express this to myself and the world.

Usually, when I state this and perhaps go on to explain that my manhood is not defined by my genitals, my mannerisms, or my physical nature, many folks will respond with questions similar to that of the tall, curly-haired man after one of my very first speeches: “Well, what does being a man mean to you, then? How do you know you’re a man?”

When I am teaching, I work diligently to hear curiosity in this question, but it’s crucial to understand that while most do not intend malice or invalidation by asking this question, intent does not bar impact. Asking a trans person to describe their understanding of their gender usually comes across as demanding we defend ourselves, and is often a microaggression.

A cis person asking a trans person to define their personhood for them can feel incredibly invalidating because, again, regardless of intent, this implies “I don’t believe you. Your declaration of yourself and your gender is not enough for me. You must explain and prove to me the validity of your gender.”

I have never met a cis person who demands other cis people verify their man- or womanhood. (Except, of course, when they think a cis person is trans and interrogate them as if they were trans.) In contrast, I don’t think I’ve met a single trans person who has not been asked to do so. No one asks cis people, “Why are you cisgender?” Meanwhile, trans people are almost never granted the space to know ourselves simply by knowing. Instead, we are repeatedly demanded to explain, prove, and validate something we simply know to be true in our hearts. This is something I encourage cis folks to consider whenever they can.

Microaggressions also most often reinforce systems of oppression— racialized hierarchies, the gender binary, socioeconomic strata, and so on. Given that cisgender folks are a dominant identity group, a cisgender person demanding a trans person’s explanation of the very thing that marginalizes them perpetuates that system of oppression. Though not the “fault” of the cisgender question-asker, the existence of this power dynamic cannot be ignored. It is the responsibility of the cisgender person to recognize it and carefully consider its impact.

When I am asked how I know I am transgender, I employ the same line of questioning as I do when people ask me how I know I am a man without a penis — I just know.

Explaining this further is difficult. In the beginning of my gender-affirmation journey, I had not yet developed a resistance to the transphobic assumptions the world had fed me, and so I decided that I could not truly be transgender if I could not defend my transness well.

“I don’t know why I am not a girl — I don’t know how or what systems have resulted in my being this way, so it must not be real,” I told myself. “My biology says ‘female’ — how do I explain what I can’t comprehend?”

Late one night in 2014, I found myself on a website filled with information targeting trans men.

“Trans ‘men’ are really just abused girls with eating disorders who hate their bodies. There is no such thing as trans,” the article read. At the time, I lay wide awake in my rehab dorm in my fourth month of eating disorder treatment. Reading this crushed me. Am I just a “messed up woman”? Am I really a man or do I just “hate my body”? Almost a decade later, I can see the web page so clearly in my mind.

For weeks after first reading it, I used this logic against myself. Despite not hating my body, I couldn’t figure out how to justify my identity in a way that I felt would make sense to the people who wrote that article. So instead, I invalidated myself using everyone else’s tools of transphobia. As you might expect, this neither changed how I felt about or what I knew of my identity, nor improved my quality of life.

After several painful months, I realized that maybe it didn’t matter.

What if I am just making it all up? I thought to myself. And so what? I don’t think this is made-up — millions of other people are also transgender—but let’s just pretend for a moment that I am. That this isn’t real. So what? Who do I hurt?

This brought me to the most powerful realization of all: It does not matter if I can justify my manhood in words that others will accept. I know that living my life in this way is far better for my mental health, for my very survival, than how I was living before. And in some ways, it’s that simple.

As I’ve continued along my path, I’ve also learned that my early attempts to justify my manhood used parameters that were already designed to disenfranchise and exclude people whose gender did not conform to the Euro-colonial gender binary: transphobic biology, studies done exclusively by cis people about mostly cis people, through misogynistic and patriarchal lenses.

I know I am transgender because I feel this to be true in my heart — the same way that someone might know that they love the person they have married, or that they love the ocean and the mountains. These are types of intrinsic knowing that no one else can take from me. Allowing myself to realize this, accept it, and then share it with the world demanded the privilege of language and support, as well as perhaps the most crucial factor: trusting myself.

Cisgender folks trust their feelings about their genders so thoroughly that they almost never doubt their gender. They never ask themselves, “Am I actually cisgender?” I encourage cisgender people or those who have never wondered about the validity of their gender to ask yourself this question: How do I know I am not transgender? How do I know I am the gender I was assigned?

You need not ask this question with judgment or ire. Ask it with childlike curiosity. How do you know?

Investigating your own gender and reminding yourself that you, too, have a gender and a gender experience are crucial parts of stepping into this journey with us. Here are a few points to help you introspect:

Remember there is no singular narrative of what it means to be a trans person.

Gender (regardless of how society wants to box it) is not binary — it’s a spectrum, a continuum.

Remember that no one else truly has the power to tell you who you are or how you are most comfortable.

Only you can know and declare that. This can be scary and difficult. In a world that prescribes us our gender (and a lot of other facets of our identities) without much consent, granting ourselves even a hair of freedom to choose — or even just to wonder — begs a realm of possibility that many have yet to explore.

Disrupt your certainty of your own gender — trans people aren’t the only people who can question their own identities.

Ask yourself: What if I’m not a man/woman? How do I know I’m a man/woman? What does being a man or woman mean to me? What gendered messaging did I receive as a kid? You might find that the answer to this last one is either very little or none at all: What gender-neutral messaging did you receive?

Invest in who you are outside of other pressures.

Who are you and who do you want to be when the lights go off at the end of the day and you’re alone with your thoughts in bed? Don’t focus only on your body and its shape or your genitals or your hormones. That’s only a fraction of this. Ask yourself the questions that pull at your heart, that disturb you: Who are you inside? What will make you live the happiest, most authentic life? When have you felt the most like yourself and what contributed to that feeling? If nothing else could stop you — if other pressures didn’t exist, how would you present yourself? How would you live your life and carry yourself? What would make you happy? Take your family, your sport, your significant other, your peers, everyone, out of the equation, just for a moment. What would you do just for you? I always imagined myself on an island alone, trying to survive on my own, just as me. Who did I see? I always saw myself as a man. Of course, this line of questioning works for more than just gender, but try to focus on gender for a little while. See what insights emerge.

Consult your younger self.

I always choose my eight-year-old self because I think he knew a lot about who he was, and his knowing wasn’t yet hindered by all that the world told him he had to be. Think about who your younger self imagined you to become. Who have you always dreamed of growing up to be? What would your younger self think of you today? Why?

Remember that the questions are often more important than the answers.

This might sound strange, but if you keep asking and wondering about the questions, you’ll eventually stumble into the answers. Don’t rush. Most of us are taught that chaos and confusion are bad and should quickly be resolved and/or left behind, but unsettled states are actually where we can learn the most. Work to appraise confusion as good—as exploration without judgment.

Ultimately, the singular question you’re asking is: What makes me feel the most like myself and what barriers do I experience to accessing this feeling?

If you don’t know the answers or if your answers waver, that’s okay. Take your time. Learning about your own gender—regardless of whether or not you are transgender—can be an exhausting experience.

Liberation from the gender binary in which we’ve all been placed is challenging and takes time, energy, and a lot of healing.