When did I know?

There is one question it seems every queer person gets asked, more than once. This question is asked of gay men, lesbians, bisexual people, trans people, asexual people. I would not be surprised if people ask intersex people.

“When did you know?”

I can’t give a simple answer, because there are so many other questions and topics. And also my minor was philosophy, do we have time for a whole discussion on the nature of knowledge?

Still. I try to answer what I think people are asking.

I knew I was bisexual at 10 or 11. Everyone—everyone—thought I was gay. But I knew I had a crush on a girl, so obviously not! It wasn’t long until I tried to sort this false binary out myself. Data was contradictory. It appeared that I am attracted to boys and girls!? Perhaps I just need to let things settle as I grew older.

It never did. While I kept telling myself I could only be one, the pendulum always swung back—the proverbial bi-cycle struck again!

By the end of high school, I think I was close to accepting my sexuality. I even confessed my feelings for the canonical straight best friend. Tragic. Then I met a girl and just… tried not to think about it. After all, I was in a relationship!

At 29, accepting I’m bi was more of a crystallization—taking solid form rather than a sudden unvieling.

Gender is more complicated.

At 4 I heard an adult joke about someone “swapping genders” in response to a haircut. Throughout my life I found myself thinking about that as I lay awake hours after I should have been asleep.

At 10, the same people accusing me of homosexuality—and it was an accusation—accused me of being a girl. My body language, some mannerisms, even what I thought was neutral clothing were used as evidence. I remember consciously trying to adjust my behaviour. One girl my age told me I “sat like a girl” because of how I crossed my legs. So I consciously adjusted how I sat. Apparently boys are supposed to take up more space to “make room”—as if this girl would have any first hand experience—so that’s what I tried to do. I can pinpoint where we were sitting when she told me that. Back of the trolley at Fort Edmonton Park.

Through high school, I would steal glances at the mannequins in store windows, wishing I could wear half the clothes—the dresses, the skirts, even women’s jeans looked so much more appealing. At one point I explained to a friend about how I would change my wardrobe if I was a girl, but the men’s counterpart just felt wrong.

I would spend hours alone reading Wikipedia articles. Not at all surprisingly, I read the transgender article several times, and then articles on surgeries, hormones, the various “sex chromosome anomalies” under the intersex umbrella. I read about the greco-roman myths of Hermaphrodite and Leucippus of Crete. Queer history covering Stonewall, Magnus Hirschfeld, Harvey Milk, and Christine Jorgensen.

I repressed gender harder than sexuality. I can’t tell you when I first thought about transitioning. Did I think about it in high school? I knew I felt some connection with the trans community. But it never felt like a real possibility. I had been told “the surgery” was for effeminate gay men. Not something boys with any attraction to women did.

I do know I thought about a few times through my 20s. I debated coming out while I was an MLA but… transitioning in the public eye felt like too much. And I was scared I would be tokenized, felt I would be taking up space from “real” trans people, and the “attention seeking” narrative played havoc with my sense of self. So I “decided” to not do it. Sometime after, I thought about self-referring to the gender program. At the time, wait times for a first appointment were measured in years, and that was for the possibility of hormones. I couldn’t take that first step and then… wait. So I tried as hard as I could to not think about it.

If you had asked me at any point, I would have denied it even to myself.

No longer satisfied with wikipedia, I accumulated everything I could on masculinity studies. Surely, the problem was just not having the right model, right? It’s just hegemonic masculinity and especially the toxic strain so common now, surely!

Did you know R.W. Connell, one of the founders of men’s studies and the person that developed the idea of hegemonic masculinity later came out as trans herself?

At 33, something shifted. The way I experienced it, I was sitting on a hill, listening to a band play and watching a lazy cloud in the sky. There was no drawn out questioning. The sentence “I’m a girl” hit me in full force. I couldn’t deny it this time, there was no turning away. As I got up and looked at the crowd around me, gender envy—a form of dysphoria—became very obvious very quickly.

Instead I had to rely on that philosophy education. What is an appropriate standard of evidence? How does one know such a thing? What if the words I am using aren’t corresponding to the words every trans person in history has used? Is it possible this is just depression? It didn’t help that I know someone who found she was mistaken after starting testosterone.

In the minutes before that I had two related thoughts. First, I was overdue for a haircut. It had been about 6 months, and my hair was about chin length. Turns out I still haven’t gotten it cut two years later. Second, I found myself thinking about that girl who told me I sat wrong. Why was I giving some 11 year old from 20 years ago so much power over me? I crossed my legs in a way that felt natural.

If dysphoria could be handwaved away, euphoria was undeniable. My partner asked if a pair of pants I bought are women’s. I swear I went bright red, and ducked away to hide the smile I couldn’t suppress. They are not women’s pants, but the idea was enough to cement it for me.

At 33, I couldn’t keep denying that I am trans.

But. Is it fair to say that's when I knew?

I'm not so sure. I think the 10 year old trying to hide herself away knew at some level. So did the teenager daydreaming about queer liberation and affirming fashion. The politician definitely knew but couldn't give herself the permission to move forward. There is a real reason why the 4 year old was so captivated by the idea of "switching genders"

Fundamentally, the knowledge was always there, I just stopped closing the book.