A Choice
by Craig Wiesner - San Mateo Daily Journal
If you are cisgender, meaning that the gender identity that was marked on your birth certificate is the gender that you have felt perfectly at home with in your body since, well, birth, good for you. If you are completely heterosexual, meaning that whichever gender it is you identify with since birth, whenever you’ve felt a romantic attraction to another person, that other person has always been someone of a different gender, good for you. I remember being near puberty and having friends that were delighted to grow those first hairs in new places. My cisgender, straight, male friends also loved talking about which particular girls they found attractive. While I didn’t much care about hair growing in new places on my body, I was somewhat confused by the constant talk about this girl or that, and when friends started pairing up I felt left out. As I’ve written in this column before, it wasn’t until High School when I experienced my first same-gender crush that I understood what all the hormonal fuss was about. I chose not to say a word or DO anything about that crush. I just buried it. That was a choice.
At 27, when I finally chose to come out to my family, my sister remembered that she and our cousin had dressed me up like a baby girl and pushed me around the neighborhood in a stroller. She asked me if that could have influenced me becoming gay. I said “YES! My therapist says that was probably the trigger.” I waited a few beats before I told her I was joking. That cousin’s adoptive mother, by the way, was born intersex, with a combination of male and female genitalia, which doctors didn’t deal with until she couldn’t get pregnant. A small percentage of people are born with some form of intersex traits, causing parents and doctors to sometimes “choose” a gender to assign at birth, including performing surgeries on infants to enforce that “choice.”
Now let’s look at being transgender. Imagine if, at birth, you were assigned female, yet, during early childhood you always felt like you were really a boy. Imagine if that first time in school, when the teacher told everyone to line up in one line for boys and one for girls, you were absolutely certain you did NOT belong in the row you’d been assigned. Imagine being forced to dress in a way that made your skin crawl, that caused pain, that made you feel terrible all day. Imagine believing that as you approached puberty your body would start to betray you and the pain you’d suffer would be much worse than just wearing the “wrong” clothes. Imagine finally coming out and telling your parents, and they sought the best professional help, maybe even asked their pastor for advice, and everyone got on board with helping you, using what the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Psychiatric Association have found to be the best tools and practices for gender-affirming care, and for the first time in your life, you started to feel right, good, whole.
That’s what it felt like for me to finally accept myself as a gay man and I was able to do that, thanks in large part, to the people who rose up at the Stonewall Inn in 1969. That uprising was led by drag queens and transgender heroes (theyroes) who were tired of being harassed, beaten, and arrested. Two weeks ago, on the day before Valentine's Day, following orders from the Republican administration, the National Park Service removed the letter “T” from the Stonewall Monument website, in an attempt to erase Transgender people from our history. That, for me and the LGBTQIA+ community and our allies, is unacceptable.
My question for cisgender heterosexuals (who oppose trans rights) is this: why can’t you just choose to celebrate being you and let other people be their best selves too? Shouldn’t we let adults make their own decisions and let medical and psychological professionals and parents make well-informed decisions about care for their children? I wonder why MAGA folks are focusing so much negative energy on the estimated 1% of Americans who identify as trans, though I know that, given the chance, many would also like to erase the “G” in me. The mother of a trans young adult whom I’ve known since she was a toddler just sent me a note so I’ll share her ask. Please call Senators Adam Schiff, Alex Padilla, and Representatives Mullin and Licardo and ask them to stand up against the Republican administration’s attacks on trans people.
Thanks to all the DJ readers who have been so supportive of the LGBTQIA+ community and me! Let’s keep the discussion going here in the comments and at craigwiesner.bsky.social.
NOTE: In the version of this column which appeared in the San Mateo Daily Journal, in the next to last paragraph I wrote "My question for cisgender heterosexuals is this" and a dear friend wrote to let me know that he felt "othered" by that line. He was absolutely right! The way I wrote it made it seem like all cisgender heterosexuals were lumped into the same, well, lump. Not fair! So, I added the (who oppose trans rights) in parenthesis to this version.