Robin has benefitted from changes in UK culture that have promoted the equality of men and women. It remains a work in progress, and because patriarchy – literally the ‘rule of the fathers’ or male privilege – remains strong, it is still easier for someone born female bodied, like Robin, to adopt and blend masculine traits and appearance, than for someone born male to adopt and blend feminine ones. Breaking down gender stereotypes does not make someone trans. Gender nonconformity is principally about behaviour rather than identity. For example, a woman who thinks and behaves in stereotypically masculine ways may be challenging gender expectations within her culture but still retain a strong sense of identity as a woman. For others though, like Robin, gender nonconformity can be a way of expressing a non-binary gender identity.
This is where the media has often caused confusion about transgender children. For children to play and dress at variance with stereotypes associated with their assigned birth gender does not mean that they’re about to be rushed towards hormone blockers and early transition. (In the UK cross-gender hormone therapy and surgery cannot be accessed by someone under 16 years old.) These behaviours have to be accompanied by the child’s insistence that their gender differs from their birth assigned gender (NHS 2008, p.17). Only a small number of gender nonconforming children grow up to identify as trans. The care of children who identify as non-binary is also a specialist area and clinics are increasingly attuned to their needs.
Learning points from Robin’s story
• It’s inevitable that we look at gender through our own experience and mainstream culture.
• The way our culture understands biological sex (bodies) and gender (social expression) has changed significantly over the past century.
• There is a tendency to revert to older social patterns of gender when someone appears to challenge current gender norms: we need to be aware of this and avoid it.
• Gender inequalities affect transgender people as they do others.
• Gender nonconforming children can be very vulnerable, largely due to the anxiety of others.
• Churches can model acceptance and care of those who are different, including those who are gender nonconforming, or who express a genderqueer or non-binary identity.
• ‘Traditional’ churches can model this inclusive ethos as much as ‘progressive’ churches, though that can be a struggle, as the next story shows.
Meet Debbie:
Hello! My name is Debbie, short for Deborah, and I deliberately chose a biblical name because my Christian faith has always been important to me. I was raised by devout Christian parents and growing up it seemed that everyone in my family circle – aunts and uncles, grandparents and cousins – were Christians. I suppose you’d describe their attitudes as conservative, but they were always loving so I wasn’t prepared for the conflict and hurt my transition was going to cause for those around me. It felt like World War III at the time!
I grew up knowing that I was ‘different’ but didn’t seem to be able to find a ‘name’ for what I was experiencing. I heard the occasional negative sermon about gay people. I was attracted mainly to boys, so I assumed that I was gay, and knew that I was going to have to hide the fact; which I did, for a while. I’m so blessed with my parents. Their love really is unconditional, and as I entered my late teens I decided to tell them. They were not totally surprised, but it still came as a shock. They said they’d always love me, no matter what, but they were fearful for the future and warned me that some members of our family were likely to find my news a challenge.
I can’t tell you what a relief it was to ‘come out’ to my parents and then to my closest friends. It meant that I could talk and talk and begin to express myself more fully, but the more I did that, and started to learn about the range of people who are ‘different’, I began to realise that the label ‘gay’ didn’t really fit my experience. Yes, I was attracted to boys, but being free to say so seemed to release the barrier that had prevented me from saying that I was a girl – Debbie. I began to tell a small handful of trusted friends, who were very supportive, but how would my parents cope?
When I told them they were terribly shocked. They’d only just begun to get used to the fact that I was gay which, as they predicted, had not gone down well with some of our relatives and at our church. My parents knew even less about trans people at that point, but what they did know made them very anxious about the reaction of family members, and our church, and their fears were totally justified. As far as our church was concerned I was an abomination and my parents were told in no uncertain terms not to support me, indeed to disown me, were I to transition. Bless them, they have stood by me, but the price has been a huge rift in our family, and eventually my parents were presented with an ultimatum, which meant that they had to leave that church, a church community they’d loved and served for many years.
I’m so grateful to my parents for standing by me but can’t help feeling guilty for what I’ve put them through. They’ve worked so hard to find out about trans people, including the science behind gender variance, and have discovered how their instinct to support me in my transition, as their beloved child, is actually borne out by the specialists in this area. It took tremendous strength and courage on their part to resist, when people they respected, including church leaders, were telling them they should do all they could to prevent me from transitioning. I guess the first coming out had already confirmed that I was a much happier person, and while they continue to be concerned for me, as someone who is trans, they could see that I ‘knew my own mind’. I can’t thank them enough for that and am so proud to be their daughter.
Debbie’s coming out story raises several important topics: the difference between sexual orientation and gender identity; the role of family dynamics; the impact of church culture; the benefits of being well-informed about how gender variance arises and is managed.
Modern communication, especially the internet, has made it easier for young people to come out as trans early on in their lives. Information is more accessible and role models are more visible. This is confirmed by Maria, who grew up in an earlier era, and observes: ‘I didn’t have an understanding of who or what I was.’
Not so very long ago, societal expectations around gender were so rigid and the stigma attached to being transgender so great, that some people hid who they were from their families and partners. Many have only come out in recent decades as attitudes have become more accepting. Some trans people in the 1960s and early 1970s came out as gay or lesbian and only later came out as trans. This was partly because at that time ‘gay’ and ‘lesbian’, although primarily signifying sexual orientation, acted partly as generic terms covering a range of identities, including variant gender identity (Brooker 2017). Being gay and lesbian then was not necessarily easy, but easier for some than admitting that one was gender-variant and might wish to consider transition.
Debbie’s two-stage coming out, as gay and then trans, a pattern I (Chris) observed among middle-aged trans people in my earlier interviews (Dowd and Beardsley 2018), can still occur today. Debbie’s social life appears to have been sheltered by the conservative church culture inhabited by her family. She’d heard of gay people, but only when she had come out as gay herself discovered that there were trans people as well. It was then she found her true community.
Ed, a young trans male, also recorded a dual coming out:
I came out