Tune your news feed into the current discourse around transgender issues in the U.S., and you will notice a conspicuous absence: transgender people themselves.
It is rare for a discussion of transgender issues to include trans voices. Part of this is due to the size of the trans community. We make up only around 1% of the U.S. population (sources vary), and so it can be difficult to bring a transgender person into every discussion. Whatever the reason, the lack of trans voices in discussions of transgender issues has a very real and negative consequence on our community.
In the absence of transgender voices, discussions on trans issues become detached from the human element. Our place in public life becomes an academic theory, the merits of which can be dissected and scrutinized.
The conversation becomes “should this niche medical treatment be restricted,” in place of “should this person standing in front of me have less bodily autonomy?”
The material issues of trans life, inequalities in healthcare and housing, discrimination in employment, access to public services, etc., all take a back seat to the question of whether we should be allowed to exist.
Another danger that arises when transgender people are excluded from trans discussions is that it becomes harder to disarm misinformation about trans issues. For a group that makes up such a small percentage of the total population, transgender issues have been disproportionately politicized in recent years.
Legitimate medical statistics and scientific studies documenting the benefits of gender affirming care have become inundated with bad-faith actors, biased and outright false statistics and transgender horror stories invented to stoke fear and uncertainty.
In short, we are experiencing a flood of misinformation about our community when media literacy in the U.S. is on a sharp decline. In a world where misinformation seemingly outnumbers facts when it comes to trans issues, trans experiences are a necessary element to ground us in reality.
As an example, take access to gender-affirming care for minors. Any person who has medically transitioned could tell you that doctors only provide gender-affirming care for minors after a thorough psychological evaluation and with the permission of the child’s parent or guardian.
This usually takes the form of puberty blockers, the effects of which are entirely reversible. More uncommonly, minors can be prescribed hormones, but usually this is reserved for severe instances of gender dysphoria. Absolutely no one performs gender-affirming surgeries on transgender minors. All of these hold true even in the most liberal and trans-supportive states.
However, one would never know this by listening to the current transgender discourse. Our lawmakers and political pundits seem to live in a world where GRS (gender reassignment surgery) is performed on a whim by pediatricians and schoolteachers.
Take it from a doll who’s been under the knife: surgery is long, complicated, expensive, requires months if not years of preparation and takes months to fully recover from. No one is doing all that in an afternoon.
Yet it can be nearly impossible for transgender people to engage with the current discourse in a meaningful way. When we are invited to partake in these discussions, it is almost exclusively for the purpose of publicly justifying our own existence.
A culture-war mentality turns every discussion about trans issues into a trial where transgender people are treated not as people with their own lived experiences, but as objects of guilt.
For discussions of transgender issues to both include trans voices and be productive, people need to engage with trans discussions in good faith. In the current political climate at Iowa State, in the state of Iowa and in the U.S. in general, I do not hold my breath.
Self-written bio: Erin Ashley is a master’s student in the aerospace engineering department and transgender activist. Before coming to ISU, she worked as an engineering consultant and briefly as a broadcast journalist.
