A reflection on a decade in trans time.
 | By Indrani Sen Culture Editor, Opinion |
"Born in the wrong body" is a cliché so pervasive that it is often used as a kind of shorthand to describe the trans experience. But it's a gross oversimplification, as Thomas McBee writes in his guest essay today recounting the 10 years since he took his first testosterone injection and began his gender transition. |
"I was a man and I was born trans, and I could hold both of those realities without an explanation that could be written on the back of a napkin," he explains, recalling an email he wrote to friends and family to announce the journey he was embarking upon. |
"I will not become a different person," I wrote in that email, defiantly and, as it turns out, correctly. "I am myself. I just want to feel more like me." |
I first met Thomas about three years into that journey, when we were editors at Quartz, and I have watched him grow into an influential and insightful voice in America's conversation on gender, narrating not just his own experience but the larger shift over that same period of time in our understanding of gender beyond the binary. |
In his piece, Thomas takes us back through this cultural transition, from the "mancession" (remember that?), to the #MeToo movement, to the growing acknowledgment of toxic masculinity and the harm it does to people of all genders. |
Trans people have played a central role in this rethinking. As Thomas writes: "Gender, it turns out, is a language, and the more fluent I became in it, the more finding the words to express the messy humanity of myself and others like me became an urgent task — in part because it was becoming increasingly clear that, whether we asked for the job or not, trans people were going to play a key role in shaping the future of gender for everyone." |
We still have a long way to go, and change happens in fits and starts, with visibility bringing backlash, evolution followed by regression. |
"But being trans," Thomas says, "taught me long ago that progress isn't so much a straight line as a relentless drumbeat, a fire inside, an instinct that is clearer than the static blaring wildly in the background." |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
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