Invisible Trans People
How many of us are there, really?
I had hoped to write this during Transgender Awareness Week, but the writing took too long. But this is a very, very important topic, and I still wanted to publish this article.
Common studies put the number of transgender people at somewhere around half a percent of people living in America. But at the end of the 1960’s, that number was just 2,500 “transsexual1” people in the entire US.
It’s pretty common to hear that there’s been a “rapid rise” in people identifying as transgender, as though that’s something of a bad thing. To me, it marks a positive development, though one that means we still have work to do, as there’s certainly still more trans people out there.
Left-Handedness
You might have heard this referenced before, but left-handedness used to be strongly discouraged. The graph below, and others like it, charts the explosive growth of left-handedness from the early 1900’s to 1950.
What changed? Were there suddenly more lefties in the world? Not at all. Instead, being left-handed was no longer pathologized, and therefore lefties weren’t forced to live as righties. While pushing someone to be right-handed might seem silly now, it’s worth remembering that, “This conversion can cause multiple problems in the developing left-handed child, including learning disorders, dyslexia,[12] stuttering[13][14][15] and other speech disorders.” (Wikipedia). Presumably, the prevalence of left-handedness was always 10-14%, but for years, most of those individuals were subjected to a kind of conversion therapy, forcing them to be what society thought they should be, but at great cost. Once the pressure to be right-handed was removed, lefties were able to flourish as themselves.
Those pushing for transgender rights assert that this is exactly what’s happening today, and it turns out, that’s exactly my experience. For most of my life, the idea of being transgender was too scary - too pathologized to consider. Once I had the safety to do so, I decided to transition about a year after first considering it, but over 30 years after thinking how much I’d prefer to be a woman.
Which means that, for the last 40 years, everyone who knew me knew a trans woman. They just didn’t know it.
The trans people you can’t see
Today, there’s a variety of trans people you know but would never know they are transgender.
In The Closet
Some transgender people may be in the closet (choosing not to reveal that they are transgender), or not even fully understand that they are transgender. In the trans community we call a person who hasn’t realized they are trans an “egg”2. Most trans people, once out, will tend to see themselves as always having been transgender3.
Either way, many trans people, quite understandably, are in the closet. They haven’t transitioned, and might not ever, for a variety of reasons. Let’s talk about some4 of those reasons:
Lack of Social Support
Transgender people have never enjoyed broad acceptance in the United States, and still don’t. We’re more accepted than we were, sure, but conservatives have no shame rejecting or even mocking transgender people. Many states are passing anti-trans laws, including bans on gender affirming care for minors or laws requiring that people use the restroom that matches the gender assigned at birth, a situation that actually puts both trans people and cisgender women at higher risk of assault by men. And politicians like Donald Trump have indicated that they would like to make these laws nationwide. Just from a legal perspective, being transgender can be difficult.
But many if not most trans people lose family or friends when they come out. That’s true for me as well, but I consider myself fortunate to have a supportive family and a group of friends who also accepted me. For those who don’t have such things, coming out can mean losing housing or community. Churches routinely expel queer people, parents routinely kick out queer children, resulting in LGBTQ+ youth making up 20-40% of homeless youth. They have to become homeless to be themselves.
Faced with such obstacles, many choose to stay in the closet as long as they can.
Money
According to a 2012 survey, 63% of transgender individuals had experienced “serious acts of discrimination” in the workplace or in trying to gain employment. Not only that, but transition is expensive if your health insurance doesn’t cover it. Some examples for transgender women:
Hormone Replacement Therapy: Requires ~3-5 prescriptions up front, at best reducing to just Estrogen in the long term, still requiring annual visits to an endocrinologist and checking hormone levels via a lab test. My HRT costs me ~$30/month and I have great insurance.
Laser hair removal for facial hair: The “beard shadow” is one of the most masculine-coded things in a person’s apperance. Removing it or covering it with makeup is important for many trans women. It can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars to remove permanently, especially if laser is insufficient (laser can’t remove light colored hair - either blonde or gray, and also doesn’t work on people with darker skin tones).
A brand new wardrobe. I basically had to restart my entire wardrobe from scratch when I transitioned. Many Pride Centers will have a “clothing closet”, which you can donate clothes to, from which trans people can then take what they need. This is a great practical way to help transgender people! Just please make sure they’re clothes that are still worth wearing - not the 20-year old t-shirt that you burned with an iron last week. Apparently larger sizes are particularly in-demand. A couple items that might surprise you:
Bras: Trans women are basically going through female puberty, so at some point we need to wear bras, but as breast growth continues, any given bra may only fit for a few months. High-quality bras can be expensive, meaning even if we use a few on heavy rotation, this isn’t a small line item. Many of us also need several good sports bras both for working out and because they’re the easiest thing to wear under a hoodie to keep people from noticing anything if we’re still trying to go in “boy mode” for some time.
Outerwear: If you live somewhere cold, you know how expensive coats, hats, gloves, etc can get.
Shoes: Women, stereotypically, have more shoes than men, frequently using them more as fashion pieces. For feminine trans women, this can be really gender-affirming. But also really wallet-draining, especially since we need to build our collection from scratch.
Hair: I went through one bottle of cheap shampoo maybe every 6 months before I transitioned, as I kept a short buzz cut. Now? I’ve gotten hair extensions and a “topper” (mini-wig), and my total hair costs for this year will likely be two to three thousand dollars including products. That will reduce as my hair grows out, but that takes forever, and 40 years of testosterone means I have significant hair loss I’m trying to cover as well.
Surgeries - these can sometimes be covered by insurance, but yikes if they are not:
“Bottom Surgery” (vaginoplasty, phalloplasty) can cost upwards of $100,000 from what I’ve seen on Reddit.
“Top Surgery” (mastectomy or breast augmentation) can cost $5-10K
Facial Feminization Surgery (FFS) can easily top $50,000, and is frequently not covered by insurance5 at all (fortunately mine will be).
That’s a sampling of the costs - building up a makeup collection ($100’s), legally changing your gender ($500 so far), or making special trips to see family to come out to them could all add even more.
Some transgender people just don’t have the money, especially if they’ve found it difficult to gain reliable employment.
Medical Choices
Some transgender people feel uncomfortable at the prospect of either hormone replacement therapy or surgery. This may be compounded by misinformation being spread about HRT and surgeries. A trans person is fully valid in their identity even without medical transition (and it’s very wrong to pressure someone to pursue any aspect of medical transition). But some may feel uncomfortable expressing themselves as transgender if they’re not able to pursue medical transition.
Religious Beliefs
Some trans people either hold religious beliefs themselves, or are surrounded by people who do, who would tell them not to transition. That was the case for me until a couple years ago, and it prevented me from even really considering the question.
Existing life
A variant on social pressure might be people who are married or might have children. That’s a hugely complicating factor, and some trans people may choose not to transition because they don’t want to disrupt their family. These are hard decisions and I respect anyone who navigates these situations with love for others and themselves.
Are these decisions ok?
100%. Every single trans person deserves the right to come out when and how they want, or not even come out at all. It is always wrong to out someone or to judge them for not having come out sooner, or even never coming out. If someone is in the closet to most, feeling unable to come out, and you know them, then just be a good friend to them, supporting them in the way they’ve found to move forward.
Gone “stealth”
A trans person who is capable of being seen as cisgender in their gender identity (e.g., if I could be seen as a cisgender woman, with no one questioning that), has the option of going “stealth”, which means they just live as their transitioned gender, and don’t tell anyone they are transgender. People do this to avoid all of the stigma that comes with being transgender, or just the awkward questions that tend to arise.
Other trans people want to be “loud and proud” about their transition, seeing it as an important part of who they are.
It’s 100% up to each trans person, and I’ve known of people who have done both.
Others might go stealth in particular situations. For example, a trans person may choose not to reveal that they are trans when they go to the grocery store, or if they are traveling through a conservative area of the country, even if they are fully out to their friends. Others might not reveal that they are trans at work, while they are fully out to their family.
My friend
put up a great reminder on Twitter a while back, where she said that if you’re out with a trans person, and they introduce someone with a name different than what you’re used to, just go with it. Avoid pronouns until you’re confident what’s going on. They may have sensed something about the situation that’s unsafe. Ask them about it afterwards.This is also a reason why I’d be uncomfortable going out with someone who refuses to respect my pronouns, especially if at some point I’m able to “pass”.
I long for a day when the external pressures that shape these decisions are gone, and each trans person can simply be how they want to be.
Detransition
Some trans people begin a transition, but then detransition, choosing to live as their assigned gender at birth instead of their gender identity. Most of those who do this will do so because of the above pressures, not because they regret transition6. Some will even only do it for a time, and then retransition later. Even if they don’t retransition later, these people may still identify (even if just to themselves) as transgender, and many of them experience significant loss at being able to express their true gender identity. Each and every one of them deserves the full support of the trans community, health care system, and anyone else. Again, their decisions are 100% valid.
If you meet one of these people after they detransition, you might never even know about that part of their life. They may hide it from you and others, for all of the same reasons I listed above.
How long?
I hope and pray for a time when these sorts of situations will become rare or even non-existent, and more trans people can just be themselves. We honestly don’t know how many trans people there are, because so many have had to hide it.
For now, I invite you to remember that there are people you will meet who are transgender, but you will never know. They could be close friends of yours, family members, neighbors, pastors, colleagues, teachers, students, baristas, doctors, or anyone else you come across.
And if that’s you - my heart goes out to you.
-Celeste
In the 60’s, the common term was “transsexual”, not “transgender”, so I’ve kept that word for historical accuracy. Today, unless a trans person specifically requests that you call them transsexual, it’s best to avoid the term and use “trans” or “transgender.”
Not in reference to a specific person, as in “I think that person’s an egg”. It’s never good to speculate on someone’s gender identity or sexuality. But I might say something like “back when I was an egg.” The metaphor comes from the idea that once your “egg cracks”, you can’t uncrack it.
This is why, unless a trans person specifically asks you to, the right way to refer to a younger version of them is still with their new name and new pronouns. So, if my sister mentions something we did as kids, she should still call me “Celeste” and “she/her”. If there’s confusion, because the person in the picture looks like a boy, she could say “this was before she transitioned.” I frequently share videos of Abigail Thorn (Philosophy Tube on YouTube), prior to her transition (for example this one on antisemitism or this one on transphobia), and when I do, I say exactly that - “this is from before she transitioned.” The same applies to Elliot Page and others. Just use the new name.
This list is almost by definition incomplete.
The lack of coverage for FFS is maddening given that there is no reason it’s less “medically necessary” than the rest of gender affirming care. It’s not “cosmetic” as many people think of it. Boys and girls start with very similar facial bone structure, but when someone goes through testosterone-based puberty, the testosterone causes masculinization of those structures. This includes:
Various angular changes to the forehead and temples
Making the brow bone more prominent, deepening the eye-sockets
Making the nose larger - both in prominence and also in the angle of the tip pointed more straight, whereas feminine noses tend to point upwards a little.
Lengthening the distance from the bottom of the nose to the top of the upper lip.
Making the chin more pronounced
Making the jawbone more square.
Making a more prominent Adam’s Apple.
There’s variance to this, of course, but those are the typical changes. These are a “one way trip” - testosterone does them, but suppressing testosterone later won’t undo them. Thus, fundamentally, FFS for a trans woman is reconstructive surgery - giving us the face we might have had if we had not gone through testosterone-based puberty.
Note: People who detransition due to regret also deserve the full support of the trans community and healthcare system, and most of the time they get it. The only ones the trans community as a whole has a problem with are those who allow their detransition to be weaponized against the trans community. I’ll do a future article about this.