Talking Trans: Abridged Version

Digital version of my eight-fold zine on Itch which itself is an abridged version of my webpage Talking Trans!

1. The Trans Question

Over the past few years, trans people went from being relative obscure to a political boogey. The Republican Party spent $215 million in the 2024 election attacking trans people, with the intent to dismantle their rights and eliminate them from society.

Democrat politicians in turn distanced themselves from trans issues, advised by consultancy firms like the HRC who purport to represent LGBT people and yet regularly throw trans people under the bus when expedient.

Trans people are at risk of losing both their healthcare and legal recognition. Platitudes and pronoun circles are not enough to protect us from this threat. Trans issues need trans voices.

2. The Basics

Trans people are those whose gender/sex differs from that which they were assigned at birth. Trans females went from male to female, and trans males went from female to male. One should discuss trans people in terms of their current gender/sex, not their past.

Trans people, unlike cis (i.e. non-trans) people, experience gender dysphoria: clinically significant distress resulting from an incongruence between one’s natal and neurological sex.

Sex transition is a medically necessary treatment for gender dysphoria, and it has three aspects: medical transition, via hormone therapy and/or surgery; social transition, living as one’s sex; and legal transition, paperwork.

3. Medical Transition

Individuals have an intrinsic sense of their sex. We know this from the case known as John/Joan where a boy was raised as a female due to a botched circumcision, up until puberty when he realized the truth.

Trans people have this experience too, because variation in sexual attributes is natural: there’s many medical cases of ‘mismatched’ genitals, gonads, and chromosomes. Neurological sex is just another variable in the equation.

Trans people seek medical transition to relieve the difference between their neurological and physiological sexes. Via hormone therapy, their body goes through a second puberty to develop a physiology matching their brain.

4. Medical Issues

There has been much fearmongering about children undergoing hormone therapy or even genital reassignment surgery. This is not happening.

WPATH recommends not to begin HRT until a patient is 14, the point at which a human is pubescent. Until then, they recommend puberty blockers, usually given to child patients who start their puberty early. This is a reversible and common treatment, only controversial because of its less common use-case for children who may be trans.

Irreversible surgeries require patients to have undergone hormone therapy for over 6 months for trans adults or 12 months for youths (never children) at a minimum age of 16.

5. Social Transition

Anything social refers to a relationship with other people. When trans people live as their current gender/sex, they’ll change how they dress, how they talk, and in what functions they participate within society.

Other people, in turn, should refer to a trans person with their new name and with pronouns corresponding to their current gender/sex. It’s okay to make mistakes but only insofar as you make an honest effort besides.

Part of that honest effort, at the same time, is not being weird about it. Don’t single out trans people. It’s even okay to “assume their pronouns” from their presentation (how they dress and act). Don’t be a jerk, and don’t be weird.

6. Social Issues

Discourse about trans people is just a lot of fearmongering! When it comes to restrooms, since trans people make up 1% of the population, you’re likely to have shared a restroom with one before. Creeps who try to ‘catch’ trans women in the women’s restroom more often just harass lesbians.

Women’s sports have become a polite avenue of fearmongering, but studies see trans athletes perform the same as their cis counterparts due to their shared physiology—and trans females often perform worse than cis ones!

Trans people just desire to live normal, worry-free lives. They deserve that, as opposed to the scrutiny and abuses they often receive due to ignorance.

7. Conclusion

Trans people have existed throughout history with past and current cultures even having their own words for them (although often still mistreating them). Only over the past century could trans people meet their needs with modern science and medicine.

Both conservatives and liberals often reduce trans people to a mere change of clothes and pronouns, but that goes against the well-documented science of dysphoria and trans care.

We hope you better understand trans people’s true experiences and needs. If you’re interesting in learning more, please visit https://talkingtrans.carrd.co/ where more questions are answered—in even greater detail!