If Gender Roles Are Bullshit, Why Be Trans?
If you have an answer already, you are not in the target market for this post
Written for people who don’t understand this. If that’s not you, you might find it boring.
(Also hi! Long time no see. Turns out what it took to get me posting again was a simple “most powerful people on earth go all in on trying to legislate your community out of existence.”)
Written in collaboration with Claude 3.5 Sonnet.
What you might believe:
You hear about transition, and it sounds like people are saying "I like feminine things so I must be a woman." It seems like this just reinforces the stereotyped gender boxes we've spent decades showing cause measurable harm and trying to demolish.
Where we agree:
We agree that liking pink doesn’t make you a girl, and liking trucks doesn’t make you a boy.
We agree that gender roles mess people up in ways that compound through whole lives. Watch little kids start monitoring themselves, restricting natural behaviors. Track how it warps career paths, relationships, basic human connection. The damage shows up everywhere we can measure - from resume responses to test scores to health outcomes.
We agree that certain media narratives about trans people miss the insights of basic feminism. Claims about "knowing because she liked dolls" aren't just oversimplified - they actively harm understanding of what's actually happening.
Where we might disagree and why:
While we both agree gender roles are harmful social constructs, I also think that trans people usually do need to change their social gender categorization (as a man/woman/other gender) and/or their body. I’ll argue that transness/transition only seems anti-feminist or ignorant if you’ve conflated multiple distinct things. Compare these examples:
Olive was always called a tomboy - loves martial arts, hates dresses, takes no shit. Like many women, she recognized how society devalues femininity and treats female bodies as objects. She hated being made to follow female gender roles, but now she’s built a life outside the kind of spaces that care about that, and she’s happy. She fights these sexist patterns while living confidently as a cisgender masculine woman, comfortable in her female body while telling gender roles to fuck off.
Compare Olive’s experience to her friend Ben, a transgender man. Like Olive, Ben was assigned female at birth and also like Olive he has mostly “masculine”-coded interests. But Ben’s experience has been fundamentally different to Olive’s. Even in spaces that completely celebrated masculine women - feminist communities he deeply respected, filled with strong women he admired - something was still relentlessly wrong. Not about valuing womanhood - he saw its power and possibility in others. But being seen/categorized as female himself created constant internal friction regardless of context. When people would praise "strong women like you" or include him in celebrations of female empowerment, it felt like they were applauding a stranger. Not because he thought he was weak or he disagreed with celebrating women, but it felt like they were praising someone who fundamentally wasn’t him. Alienating and painful. On a bodily level, his body running on estrogen and being shaped like it was, felt and looked physically wrong. Every "she", every time he was perceived as female, felt fundamentally off, even in supportive feminist spaces where being female was celebrated and gender norms were thrown out the window. It was like a persistent background static. Transitioning to male was the thing that finally fixed these specific disconnects and quieted the static.
Then, last, there’s Christopher. Ben’s housemate, another trans man. Christopher was, like both Olive and Ben, assigned female at birth and raised as a girl. Chris has always loved animals, fashion, emotional processing - tons of “feminine”-coded traits. Most of his close friendships have always been with women. He’s always been attracted to men, but before coming out as a trans man himself this attraction to men felt mysteriously uncomfortable, like something was fundamentally off about how these relationships were supposed to work. Before transitioning he also often held back from women's social spaces, despite having mainly female friends- not because he didn't want to be around women (he actively did), but because being included as "one of the girls" felt deeply wrong in a way he couldn't explain. He also dampened his many feminine interests. He worried for a while that maybe it was all internalized misogyny, trying to be "not like other girls". But that explanation didn't quite fit. He loved and looked up to the women in his life, felt naturally drawn to their friendship and company. And when he pulled away from women’s spaces, it always felt less like an act of self-rejection and more like self-protection. But protection from what? He was deeply confused. When he started transitioning the relief was immediate - being a man who loves men felt completely natural and right, in a visceral way that had nothing to do with ideas or theory. The issue had never been feminine traits, attraction to men, women's spaces, or misogyny - it was his body's female-shaped reality and being categorized as female himself. Now living as a gay man, like many gay men he fully embraces both his feminine interests and primarily women's social circles, comfortable being seen simply as a man who enjoys these things, and even as a man who’s “one of the girls” now that it’s not meant literally.
This distinction is razor sharp: Olive fights misogyny while being comfortable as female. Ben and Chris's experiences aren’t about devaluing womanhood or escaping gender roles - both valued women and felt free to be masculine or feminine. Their need for transition was about specific physical and perceptual disconnects that show up consistently in the real world.
These needs might seem mysterious - why should body traits or social categorization matter so fundamentally, once split from gender stereotypes? But we accept many deep human needs without having complete “why”s. Most people couldn't explain why they're attracted to the gender(s) they're attracted to and not others, or why they write with their left hand and can't just switch, even though both their hands are physically capable of writing. What matters more than the “why” is the consistent pattern we observe: transition reliably resolves these specific frictions while leaving personality and gender expression free to vary. Alternatives like trying to “therapize” the feelings away, do not.
The core insight is a “both and”:
Stereotyped gender roles are harmful social constructs
AND
Some people need or want to change their body and/or social gender/sex categorisation (a man, a woman, etc).
These aren't contradictory - they're two different phenomena affecting human wellbeing through different channels. Understanding this distinction lets us both fight gender roles AND support transition and help people thrive.
Note: I’ve left out some complexity here, about in particular 1. wanting to transition for reasons beyond dysphoria and 2. the complexities of how bodies, gender categorization and gendered interests/behaviours/presentations can relate while being distinct.
If this piece illuminated anything for you, please let me know.
If you have other questions you’d like me to write about let me know.