Confused?

There are people who argue that someone like me is “confused” about my gender. LGBTQI activists generally dispute this argument, saying it is dismissive and insulting.

Which it is. Yet it is also correct that sometimes I am confused.

I was confused about my gender. I was confused that I was the only boy I knew who liked fashion and didn’t know why others didn’t. I was confused why things as mundane as hobbies, books and even colours were put into gender categories when they had nothing to do with physiology or chromosomes. I’m still confused by this. I couldn’t understand why I would be teased for leaning on something with my wrist limp and my poise feminine; why my teenage friend thought he was being helpful by pointing it out to me and suggesting I change that stance. I was confused by how I seemed to relate to girls more deeply than the boys around me. With hindsight, I was confused by my lack of understanding of the capacity for friendship with members of the opposite sex, an ignorance admittedly fostered by attending a boys-only high school.

I was confused then and am less so now. Understanding my transgender nature has made me clearer about myself.

But, to the extent that people reject who I am; want me to tick one of two boxes on a form; ask me to go into the toilet for people with penises; want to risk harm to children by preventing them from learning the things that I was never able to learn; it can still sometimes be confusing. It makes me wonder, occasionally, about my right to be me. Eventually, perhaps people will stop thinking they can order everyone in the world to behave and appear in one of two ways according to a set of made-up rules, and then, finally, I won’t need to be confused any more.