How I Know I'm Transgender

Part 1: Why I shouldn't have to answer this, but will anyways

“Were you expecting me to talk about my childhood?”

Abigail Thorn, Philosophy Tube, “Identity: A Trans Coming Out Story”

In my previous “coming out” posts, I’ve been careful to avoid oversharing details. For one thing, it’s difficult to take them back once they’re out there. What do I want people to know? What will be mocked or used against me? What would be disrespectful toward my family?

But I get plenty of questions: Most of them are truly in good faith - people who are curious and want to know what it’s like. And I very much want to help them I do strongly recommend Abigail Thorn’s video above for that. And some of them are in bad faith, frequently the sort of badgering that’s known as sealioning: continually asking “but what about” and “prove it” and “why” until the target just gives up.

The biggest factor in me being careful about sharing a “defense” of my transgender womanhood is this: no trans person needs to prove to anyone that they are transgender, anymore than someone needs to prove to someone that you are cisgender¹. No one asked me to prove I wanted to be a Software Engineer, or to prove I wanted to marry my wife, Kat, or to prove we wanted to have children. And I should not have to prove that I am trans. And no Christian asked me to prove that I knew I was a Christian, or if they did, their metrics were far removed from any bar Jesus set.

And yet…

That said, I am choosing to share my story, though slightly under duress.

You see, a recent poll showed that only 11% of Americans know a trans person (and just 6% of Republicans do). And while 89% don’t know a trans person, 43% have decided that gender affirming care should be criminalized, an increase of 15% in two years. How about you?

Since my firm belief is that empathy is difficult when you don’t know someone, part of the goal of this blog is to help you to get to know me, so that you can put at least one face to this concept of trans people.

Furthermore, I’m aware that in some circles, the most popular books about trans people are written by those who are not supportive of trans people. Preston Sprinkle’s 2021 book Embodied² is likely the most popular book on the subject written by an evangelical, and is riddled with problems, as my friend Billie Hoard is brilliantly documenting (start here). It has nearly twice as many reviews as Austen Hartke’s wonderful 2018 book Transforming, which seems to be the most popular book written by a trans Christian³. Sprinkle is a cisgender, heterosexual man, while Austen Hartke is a transgender man. Consider these stats from Amazon:

• Amazon:

  • Reviews: Embodied: 693; Transforming: 356

  • Best Sellers Rank: Embodied: 13,311; Transforming: 100,986

  • Rating: Embodied: 4.6; Transforming: 4.7

  • Rank in Christian Social Issues: Embodied: 32; Transforming: 323

• GoodReads:

  • Rating: Embodied: 4.4; Transforming: 4.4

  • Reviews: Embodied: 1,932; Transforming: 833

So while Hartke’s book is reviewed just as well or even better than Sprinkle’s, Sprinkle’s book would seem to have sold somewhere around twice as many copies in less than half the time.

What does this all add up to? It means many people are learning about transgender people from cisgender people. And worse, they’re learning from cisgender people who don’t like transgender people. This is causing those people to adopt anti-trans views. I can’t begin to overstate the feeling among much of the trans community that if we don’t speak up, we’ll rapidly lose our rights.

I am often interested in conversations about bathrooms or sports, right up until the moment where the other party refuses to call me “she”, or “Celeste.” They deny the very existence of trans people, asserting that I’m delusional, confused, have a fetish, or even that I am a predator trying to gain access to women’s spaces. But this is true of so many of those who want to deny me access to women’s restrooms, or deny trans girls the ability to be on a girls sports team, or just ban the medical care that is dramatically improving my life. It’s true of so many who are telling people that they should be against those things too.

I find myself in an interesting spot: I do not owe my story to anyone. My story is… my story. But if I don’t tell my story, then people like Preston Sprinkle will make one up for me.

Because of that, I have seen trans women, in an attempt to combat the pseudo-science (debunked) theory of autogynephilia⁴, go into explicit, excruciating detail about their own sexual practices and experiences that, let’s be honest: no one should ever have to talk about.

I will never (I hope) go into that level of detail. It’s dehumanizing to have to do that. But I am going to do a deep dive (over multiple posts) on the single most important question: How Do I Know I’m Trans?

My First (and ultimately last) Answer

So let’s start with the simple answer.

They say, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” I want to share a selfie I took at my parents house last week. This is my first answer, and when I finish writing about this topic after who knows how many posts, it will end up being my final answer as well, because it’s the only one you can actually see.

I still haven’t figured out eyeliner and I’m not sure what’s going on with my eyeshadow, and I wish my hair was a bright purple. I haven’t yet had facial feminization surgery, and if you zoom in really close (please don’t) you can see that I probably should have shaved the stubble on my face that morning.

But I was happy. Happier than I’ve been in years. I didn’t have to work for it. I was surrounded by people who love me and are putting in the work to respect me as myself. For the first time in decades, maybe ever, I didn’t have to hide. I didn’t have to pretend to be someone I wasn’t, even if I’d gotten good enough at the role that I didn’t think about it much of the time. There’s a lot more to it, but for now, just look at my eyes, the smile, or even the fact that I put work into my hair, makeup, outfit, and jewelry, and I hope you can see the joy.

Because in the end, the joy is how I know I’m trans. The truest sign of being trans isn’t so much the gender dysphoria we feel when we can’t be ourselves, but the gender euphoria we feel when we can be.

Thanks for reading, and love you all,

Celeste Irwin

1. As always - reminder that “cisgender” is simply the opposite of “transgender” - it’s anyone who doesn’t identify as trans.

2. Link is here, but I absolutely do not recommend this book.

3. Other notables include “In the Margins” by Shannon T. L. Kearns, which I also recommend, and “As a Woman” by Paula Stone Williams.

4. The idea that a trans woman is just a man who is sexually aroused at the idea of himself as a woman, which casts trans women as nothing more than men with a fetish. It’s false.