Is it morally acceptable to change your gender?
Just over half the country doesn’t think so — a proportion that has stayed fairly stable since 2021, the year after I disclosed my gender transition. It’s disheartening to reflect on the fact that every other person you meet, statistically speaking, disapproves of your existence.
That divide perhaps explains the onslaught of anti-trans ads Republican candidates have run in the final weeks of the election, hoping to paint their more trans-accepting opponents as far outside what is normal in American society.
And yet, most notions of “normal” have rarely been fixed, even as there have always been those who insist they are immutable. Certainly gender may be one of the most fundamental — dare I say natural — ways we have organized societies. But history reminds us that all assumptions should always be questioned. Every significant challenge to the existing order — from the vote for women to interracial unions to marriage equality — has provoked strong reactions and, not uncommonly, hand-wringing about the downfall of civilization.
The debate over trans existence, and rights, might actually best be understood in the context of some (imperfect) historical parallels. Back in the 1950s, for example, Richard and Mildred Loving were prosecuted for being married and wanting to live in their home state — a crime only because Richard was white and Mildred was Black.
Race isn’t gender, and the comparisons aren’t perfect. And yet the arguments made against interracial unions like the Lovings’ in the 1950s and ’60s are eerily similar to those made against marriage equality a decade or two ago, and against trans people today: We hear appeals to God, science, the well-being of children and the natural order, in efforts made to write out of existence trans people, our care and our place in public life. Those arguments resonated back then, as perhaps they do for some people now. In the 1960s, a vast majority of Americans disapproved of interracial marriages, (a majority didn’t approve until the 1990s), even if now few question whether people of different races should be allowed to marry.
It’s easy, with the benefit of hindsight, to scoff at the narrow-minded views of the past. But doing so in the moment can be challenging. After all, “normal” has come to mean more than just “the average” or “the majority.” As Peter Cryle and Elizabeth Stephens, Australian professors, noted in “Normality: A Critical Genealogy,” “it also implies what is correct or good, something so perfect in its exemplarity that it constitutes an ideal.”Normality imposes an often arbitrary frame.
That frame, that often unconscious bias, shows in several ways. The anxiety over gender care for minors has been largely focused on the fear that kids might later regret medical interventions; far less thought is given to trans kids who may not be able to get the care they need. That’s akin to focusing the abortion debates largely on the fraction of women who are remorseful about having had an abortion while neglecting the impact of restricting access to the procedure.
It also ignores the fact that many trans people choose not to pursue any form of medical intervention; but we’d like to be able to make that decision ourselves. Debates about whether trans women should be allowed into women’s bathrooms or changing rooms center on a supposed risk to cisgender women; where trans women like me should actually go to pee — and whether we would be safe doing so — is barely an afterthought. Trans people are over four times as likely to be a victim of a violent crime than cis people, according to a study by the Williams Institute at U.C.L.A. (And trans men are nearly entirely invisible in this discussion; they’re so far outside the realm of imagination — of normality — that their existence is often ignored.)
Still, it is clearly not only possible but also typical for society to look back one day at one era’s accepted truth and reject it.
Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg mused during his stint onstage at the Democratic National Convention about the mundane and chaotic — and yet miraculous — daily routine of raising children with his husband: “This kind of life went from impossible to possible, from possible to real, from real to almost ordinary in less than half a lifetime.”
How did support for same-sex marriage go from just over a quarter of Americans near the end of President Bill Clinton’s first term to nearly 70 percent this May?
Strategic decisions to frame the issue as one of marriage equality — a celebration of a conservative institution — rather than as same-sex marriage helped shift the terms of the debate. The growing visibility of gays and lesbians in public life and popular culture that demystified what was previously an unseen subculture for many in the mainstream certainly helped — beginning with popular TV comedies featuring relatable gay characters and extending to court victories like 2015’s Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court ruling that established marriage equality as a right. Further, research from Pew indicates that a third of the people who changed their minds about marriage equality did so because they knew someone who was gay or lesbian.
Acceptance of trans people is still a work in progress. Just over 30 percent of Americans say that a friend, relative or colleague has told them that they are transgender, though that number is likely to grow — albeit slowly. We’re unlikely ever to be more than a sliver of society.
What’s more, gender roles and functions are, understandably, deeply entrenched in the fabric of society. Childbearing requires a uterus, for example, and it makes sense to treat those with one differently from those who don’t have one — at least when it comes to, say, pregnancy.
And yet it shouldn’t have any bearing on working, schooling or voting — all of which, at one point, weren’t considered acceptable activities for women. The New York Times editorial board itself campaigned just over a century ago against women’s suffrage, insisting that “without the counsel and guidance of men, no woman ever ruled a state wisely and well.”
That attitude — and argument — hasn’t aged well. Nor have the justifications against interracial marriage. Yet despite the glacial pace of acceptance, 2025 will feature — whoever wins — an interracial couple among the highest levels of this country’s political leadership.
I can’t help thinking it’s worth reflecting on what the trial judge in the Loving case, who argued that allowing people of different races to marry would go against God’s will, and other right-thinking people of that era might make of the current political landscape. For all the polarization, misinformation and puerile attacks on candidates, being married to someone of another race simply isn’t part of the equation at all. It is, in fact, something … ordinary. Even normal.
I remember, on one of my first flights back to Singapore to see my mother after I transitioned, watching as a flight attendant made her way down the aisle to greet each frequent flier by name and to thank us for our business. Some quirk of Cathay Pacific’s database didn’t allow me to register my transition in its system, so when she got to me, her puzzled frown as she checked and rechecked the name on her manifest as she glanced up and down at me told me she wasn’t expecting to see a woman in my seat.
Her tone was tentative. “Er … did you … change your seat?” she asked.
“No,” I replied, “I changed my gender.” She didn’t miss a beat. “I’ll tell the rest of the crew,” she said brightly and went about her business.
That kind of ordinary is all I’m looking for.
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