Internalized transphobia

I didn't think I had any internalized transphobia. That was until I read about what it actually was. It's like racism or fat phobia: Invisible to a member of the majority, until you become more knowledgeable... And then it's EVERYWHERE and impossible to unsee. So internalized transphobia, or cissexism if you will, is just as pervasive.

For example: This cis(het) default that everyone are either men or women, and that trans people are abnormal / freaks / strange... That's transphobia. Sure, trans people are statistically a minority. But they, WE'RE, a normal variation on the human expression of gender. Just like people with red hair are statistically fewer than those with brown hair, but that doesn't make redheads abnormal freaks.

In me, right now, it manifests as a sort of impostor syndrome. I worry that I'm not REALLY nonbinary. I worry that I've been following lgbt+ news and blogs and politics and communities for so many years, that I somehow fooled myself into joining. That's this is a form of self-hypnosis, because I know so many lgbt+ people and wanted to feel included. Wanted to be "special".

But this is bullshit. I KNOW that this is bullshit. You see, I've considered whether I could be trans many times before. I've even felt a sort of envy towards people I know who are trans.. And I just didn't connect the dots.. This quote I found online really spoke to me tonight:

"But here’s the thing… only trans people are worried about if they are actually transgender! A cisgender person does not have this obsession with their identity, they think about it, they process it, they move on. If you keep returning to these thoughts over and over again, this is your brain telling you that you took a wrong turn." (https://genderdysphoria.fyi/en/impostor-syndrome)

I also worry that it's just a phase, that I'll "switch back to woman" soon... But since that's sort of what genderfluid IS, that shouldn't worry me either really... And that website had something to say about that too:

"at the start, we nearly all feel like our gender is a confusing mess. We feel like we can’t possibly be trans enough to claim a queer identity, and we definitely don’t feel trans enough to transition. We worry that we are making the wrong decision, that we are overreacting, that stepping outside of our little cocoon of self-preservation is liable to be the biggest mistake we could ever make in our life.

If you feel all of this stuff, you’re in good company. My therapist even jokes that asking “am I trans enough?” is so common that it’s practically a symptom of being trans. You cannot figure out your gender identity without questioning it, and self-doubt is a normal part of that process." Source: https://genderdysphoria.fyi/en/am-i-trans

So yeah, I'm trans alright. I'm definitely trans enough. Regardless of what my internalized transphobia is trying to tell me.