Evan Urquhart

This is like a bomb https://twitter.com/ContraPoints/status/1045018272603738112 …

So, I'm going to write a thread riffing off my response to Contrapoints that I'm sure no one wants to read, but it's sort of burning a hole in my brain so here goes.

Here's the thing. I didn't consider myself a man pre-transition, and I don't really consider my pre-transition self a man now. I accept and affirm that many trans people experience a deep inner sense of gendered self, but I didn't. Also, I consider myself a binary trans man.

Pre-transition, I had terrible feelings of discomfort around having a female body. It was bad enough that I felt transitioning was warranted just to see if these bad feelings really were gender dysphoria and could go away.

Here's a list of things that helped those feelings: 1. Dressing in male clothes 2. Binding 3. Starting testosterone 4. Passing as male Pronouns aren't on that list.

When Contrapoints says that passing IS her transness, I don't know if she means what I mean, or if this is something a lot of binary trans people feel, but for me my desire to have a cis male body is at the heart of my transness.

To some extent, I can never have a cis male body. And I definitely can't have a history of always having had a cis male body. But passing allows me not to have to think about that, and to get on with my life. And for me that's just... it.

All the recognition of my gender in the world wouldn't help without a cis-passing male body. And, for me, the question of whether I'm "really" a man is very secondary to me. If people are seeing a man when they see me, that's the thing that feels real to me.