Transgender: We Don’t Have to Get It to Respect It

How many transgender people do you know? How many are transgender but you don’t know it? Okay, that last one is a trick question but valid. For the record, I know people who identify as transgender female, nonbinary or one of the other non-cisgender terms. Honestly, I have found through my personal experience that it doesn’t actually matter if a person is male, female, non-binary, transgender, or a gender not listed here. At the end of the day, I’m going to interact with them the same way I interact with any other human being. Why wouldn’t I?  It’s quite extraordinary that I, a cisgender female, know as many non-cisgender people as I do considering those under the bigger transgender umbrella comprise only 0.5% of adults

18-24 years old and 0.3% 65 and older in the USA.

Let’s define a few words:

Transgender: gender inside the body, I think in terms of mind and spirit, doesn’t match the sex they were assigned at birth based on external genitalia.

Cisgender: not transgender; internal sense of self matches their external genitalia and sex they were assigned at birth.

Nonbinary: umbrella term for a gender that does not fit neatly into the male OR female binary. People who identify as nonbinary might use a more specific term to define who they are.

If this sounds like malarky to you because you have only ever considered gender from the perspective of external parts and male OR female maybe try conceiving it of another way just for kicks. We’re going to use our imagination in some real and unreal ways here. Imagine you were born with no genitalia, genitalia of one sex and then discover you have reproductive organs that don’t match your genitalia (which does happen), or your genitals and/or reproductive organs were destroyed in a bomb blast. Would you still “feel on the inside” male, female or some combination of the two? If you were blind and had really tiny arms and couldn’t reach certain parts of your body, would your brain still recognize yourself being a particular gender? It could happen, couldn’t it. It IS possible there is a part of the brain that stores identity information including gender. It is possible that in your soul you KNOW who you are and it’s not what people on the outside see.

There are things about the human body science research hasn’t figured out, yet. I can validate that statement based on what I have learned after a concussion and post-concussion syndrome affected me in ways I never would have thought possible. As one doctor stated, there is more we don’t know about the brain than we do know. Perhaps you are still having a hard time grasping the concept of gender as an independent entity from sex assigned at birth. That’s okay. Either way, would it be appropriate to tell another person who they are according to our own understanding of the world? Not so much! I mean who do we think we are? God? Another day we might go a little more in depth for understanding of how all this can be from a body-mind-spirit perspective but as the title suggests we don’t have to understand a person or other aspects of their life to show respect and allow for their (gender neutral term) personal dignity.

Calling up a little humility here, all of us have to remind ourselves that we are not all-knowing like God. I see this as perhaps the most common way humans mess us, placing ourselves in a position above our fellow humans and more like the creator of the universe whose existence is bigger and more awe-inspiring than any human can get close to becoming or even imagine. It’s like a breath of fresh air when someone says, “I don’t really know much about that. Can you tell me more?” or “I might do some research on that because I know very little about it” or even “I don’t know much about that so I really can’t give an opinion.” We will never know everything and no one really expects it of us.  Our children think we know everything when they are little but there comes a time when we know nothing as far as they are concerned until it eventually settles somewhere in between.

Being that we as humans wrongly tend towards posturing as more knowledgable than we truly are, we believe that every opinion that comes from our lips is completely valid. Yes, we are entitled to our opinions but it allows for a more constructive discussion if we recognize and admit when our opinions are simply a thought and not an opinion based on true, reliable, less biased information. I think it actually demonstrates good character when we say something like, “I tend to think (fill in the blank) but that’s not based on anything. It’s simply a thought I had.”  There’s nothing wrong with that and isn’t it a peaceful experience to hear and freeing to say because you have let go of the expectation that you have to be perfect and know everything! (Recovering perfectionist here) It’s a great thing all around.

Now that we’ve established that a) we do not know everything and b) we don’t have to know everything, let’s get to the second part of the title, “to respect it” or rather, them. One might ask, “Why do we have to?” You don’t. We all choose our words and actions. Granted not all of them are conscious words and actions because there is this internal monitoring system in the brain working below the conscious levels all of the time, scanning for potential threats to the needs of the self and responding automatically. If you feel this might be the case for you regarding transgender people, mindfulness can help work through those automatic responses we might have that could end up causing real harm to others. I’m not just using up blog space here. When we don’t understand, we might automatically default to fear. Or someone with a power agenda might suggest that a particular demographic is dangerous and a threat to you in order to trigger that nervous system response so they can better get you to do what serves their interests without you engaging conscious, moral thinking. Power dynamics is a whole other topic to explore but I digress.

So you still might be in the “why should I care” mindset or “this politician, religious leader, et. al said transgenders will harm our women and children, take all our jobs, try to take over the world, yadda yadda yadda.” I can’t help you work through that sort of manipulation. I’m not a trained therapist. Yet I can tell you from the perspective of one who knows some transgender folks, they are more like you than not. YOU can be assured that your dignity exists simply because you are a creation by the one I call God. If we ascribe to the moral reasoning called Natural Rights as described in the Declaration of Independence, then we are created equal and our lives, liberty and the right to achieve happiness ought to be automatic.  If your moral reasoning is based on the much more controversial, yet sometimes useful, Divine Command, discussed in a previous post, there are multiple verses in which God the Father and God the Son state the value of all human beings and what we are to do based on that truth. God’s words. Not the words of others who are just as human as we are and subject to the only context they can understand.

If you didn’t understand transgenderism at the beginning, you probably still don’t. No worries. Simply know that transgender people just want to be able to live as the people they were created to be, as YOU should be able to do as well.  If that’s not happening, then maybe we should be willing to allow each other the opportunity to do just that. No matter what you see (or don’t see) we all have the same human needs and rely on each other as fellow human beings to live in our social structure and not be harmed. That’s what morality is about. That’s what the United States is supposed to be about. There’s plenty of room to grow. We don’t have to “get it” to respect other people as fellow human beings who are more like us than not.

Source: What Percentage of the Population is Transgender in 2024?