I talked a little in Common Ally Slurs about how I considered “authentic” a slur, mostly because “allies“ say it in an empty, meaningless way. Thinking on it more, I want to take this a step further and say that exhorting trans people to seek their “authentic self” is harmful because it perpetuates unattainable and fixed ideas of personal identity. By making transition about aspiring to an authentic self at any given moment, systems of power excuse themselves from accountability and therefore any need to make lasting change to provide material support to trans populations. I see this happening in two ways, which I will detail shortly. Instead of aspiring to determine what constitutes the authentic self, I think that a better question to ask is “what is working for me right now?” Our awareness of self and needs shift over time, so goals we set for ourselves in the past may not be reflective of our present. We can best care for ourselves by accepting the layered, revelatory nature of transition.
The first kind of authenticity is more dated but still comes up: cis-passing as authentic. This really only applies for people who present more binary-aligned, the idea being that by working to learn gender expression and affectations that are supposedly cis one can cultivate a certain authenticity. Historically being more cis-passing meant that medical gatekeepers were more likely to treat a person as a “true trans” and therefore give them access to more resources, so the only successful trans people under this model were the ones who had the money and time in the first place to invest on being cis-passing. Obviously there are other reasons that someone might want to be cis-passing - safety in a transphobic area being at the top of the list - but also many of us internalize cultural beauty and gender expression standards that are difficult to attain generally and not actually reflective of the breadth of cis experience. This regressive approach towards authenticity creates a class divide in transness and sets the bar of many trans people’s self evaluation at a height most cis people couldn’t clear.
The second kind of authenticity seems to be more commonplace and can be much more subversive. It says that our authentic selves are both individual and knowable, in the sense of the slur “I’m so glad you’re being your authentic self.” There are a couple problems here. First, does anyone really live their life with a clear idea of what their authentic self is? Pulling from Judith Butler by way of Abigail Thorn’s latest video, if gender is performative, the private inner self that is gendered is an illusion generated by our actions. That authentic self is a mirage that is constantly shifting, not something we can provide on a form for voice therapy lessons. I’m thinking about how many times I was asked early on about my “transition goals” and just felt like throwing up my hands in exasperation. Second, this language frames transition as a sort of personal expression of individuality, as opposed to a process of recognizing and addressing real physical needs for a person. If transition is expression, it’s easier for systems of power to shrug off providing resources for trans people because we’re just as “valid” without those resources. There’s a really good Substack post by Jules Gill-Peterson that talks about how this framing of transness opens us up to transphobic legislative attacks.
Both of these framings of authenticity are transnormative because they imply an A-to-B process for transition, and both allow institutions to disavow their accountability to trans populations. We need to espouse a broader understanding of transition as an ongoing process of self discovery that can sometimes be surprising. When I first came out, I decided passing wasn’t going to be an option for me because of my height, so I concentrated on being “boring woman who is obviously trans.” Eventually new dysphorias revealed themselves to me, and some older ones became less important, and I found myself working towards surgeries and hair removal but also caring less about my no-longer-cis but non-passing voice. I discovered euphoria in showy and colorful forms of femme gender expression, and more recently came to embrace aspects of how my transfem body breaks traditional feminine beauty standards. At none of these points could I have seen what the next layer was going to reveal about myself or what my future needs were.
We deserve systems that aid us in pursuing bodily autonomy wherever we are on our gender journeys, towards whatever ends. This is also a reminder to take heart, because the stories and phrases that surround us rarely reflect the true nature of what it means to be trans. Transition asks us to radically accept who we are at any given moment and embrace change as our needs and desires reveal themselves to us. If we can hold that in our hearts, we can free ourselves from the anxiety of how “authentic” we are, and just be.