trans pain / trans rage / trans joy

What does it mean to be a trans person?

One can find a variety answers to this question, some closer to the truth than others. The matter-of-fact definition – trans people are people, whose gender identity differs from the gender assigned to them at birth – consciously forms a wide category, capable of encompassing people of various identities, backgrounds and histories.

However, tension lies even at the core of this short definition. By defining trans people on the basis of the relationship between their gender identity and assignment at birth, with its many carried assumptions about a person's body, past and present, we grant these gender concepts meaning and importance.

Of course, both gender identity and gender assigned at birth have a great material impact on our lives. The assignment of gender carries with itself expectations for the behaviours of cis and trans people, which must be fulfilled to evade the wrath of a cisheteronormative society.

We cannot escape the broader effects of these expectations – sexism, gender roles, stereotypes, homophobia, transphobia, limits placed on reproductive rights and bodily autonomy, and other such wonders – simply by declaring that the importance of one’s assigned gender at birth is overstated. Our culture is drenched in it, its stench follows us even in our safest spaces.

It is understandable then why such a definition for trans identity is used. It performs a practical function – once we identify these concepts, we can collectively demand the solutions to the problems they cause us, and the tools to live in dignity, pleasure and comfort.

Even so, I wish to ask, how else could we describe trans existence?

Why are we hurting?

To better understand the current definitions, it’s important to examine the context in which they were formed.

Many of us are inclined to believe that the experiences of trans people are marked by pain. Almost all attempts to classify us by the psychiatric industry are built on the concept of suffering – the term gender dysphoria is only one of the names given to this suffering. A dissatisfaction with aspects of one’s body and their position in social realms is constructed as the essential signifier separating trans from cis.

Here we encounter the first problem – by presenting suffering as the central attribute of trans experience, we inevitably position it as a pathology. Cis identity is presented as the norm that must be upheld, while trans identity is presented as a divergence and disorder, which must be cured. The pain experienced by trans people is regarded as only a symptom, arising from their personal relationship with their body.

This outlook is false, as it fails to reflect the causality of pain. It’s true that many trans people experience pain during the course of their lives, but not all of this pain stems from dysphoria. Oftentimes, suffering is not the cause of a trans identity, but a consequence of the societal reaction towards failure to live up to gender assignment expectations. In the face of rejection, discrimination and hate, which of us would not feel suffering?

Would trans people not feel pain or gender dysphoria in a world that welcomed them with open arms? It’s difficult to say, as it’s difficult to imagine what such a world would look like – gender is so intertwined with our present society that life without it is unimaginable to many.

There are attempts to reform the position of psychiatry towards trans people. The diagnosis of transsexualism, listed among mental and behavioural disorders in the 10th revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10), has been moved to a new chapter of conditions related to sexual health and replaced with the term gender incongruence.

The supposed goal of such a change is to depathologise trans identities, as modern research indicates that transness is not a mental disorder. However, trans existence remains diagnosable. The terms have shifted, but their function has not, and trans people remain in the clutches of psychiatry.

Because trans existence is viewed as a diagnosable phenomenon, this diagnosis is inevitably assigned some criteria. In the ICD-10, the main criterion is the previously mentioned gender dysphoria, described as a “discomfort due to one’s anatomical sex or its incongruence”. According to recommendations, this discomfort should persist for at least two years.

During the time of writing, this criterion is still followed in Lithuania. Without a diagnosis, legal and medical transition is inaccessible.

A second problem becomes apparent here – trans people who seek transition must fulfill diagnostic requirements. Gender expectations return here, albeit in a somewhat different form – in a way, trans people are forced to conform to the pain narratives that have been crafted for them, or else they risk losing access to desired changes.

Diagnoses that pathologise trans identities, regardless of the specific terms used to describe them, create not only the normative cis and deviant trans categories, but also the categories of really trans and not really trans. In the eyes of the psychiatric industry, being not cis is not equivalent to being trans, and trans people also must be of a certain kind – only binary men or women, only heterosexual, only suffering and loathing their bodies. If these requirements are not fulfilled, the path forward can be closed shut.

The cost of time.

As a diagnostic tool, psychiatrists sometimes employ a real-life experience period, during which a trans person is required to live as their gender for some set amount of time. It is claimed that the goal of this process is to test whether a trans person can and is able to successfully live in their gender role, presumably for the rest of their life.

This means that some trans people are forced to navigate life in a gender role that does not fulfill the expectations placed on them by their assigned gender. In other words, to gain access to legal and medical transition, trans people must spend a period of time specifically in the unsafe position that elicits transphobic societal reaction.

The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) removed the requirement for real-life experience from their Standards of Care only in September 2022.

Even when a real-life experience test is not necessary, the acquisition of a diagnosis might require a lot of time, sometimes over a year of consultations. These consultations are generally not free – when psychiatrists have so much power to decide the course of one’s transition, trans people tend to pick those who will act favourably. Typically these are specialists that work in private healthcare.

Waiting does not cease even after one has obtained a diagnosis. Although an executive order signed into effect by the Minister of Justice in December 2021 presents the possibility for unmarried trans adults of legal age to change their government names by submitting a request to the civil registry, one’s personal code and gender marker in Lithuania can only be changed through court.

Waiting is also inevitable in the realm of medical transition, even after all specialist consultations have been attended and access to all wanted healthcare has been granted. The effects of hormone replacement therapy do not become apparent overnight, and any surgical procedure is followed by a period of recovery.

Especially challenging are the circumstances of trans minors, who are forced to go through puberty and the development of unwanted secondary sex characteristics that comes along with it, as puberty suppressing medication is not prescribed to them. The documents of trans minors can only be updated if the courts allow it, and only with the support of parents.

The directive on “Gender Identity Disorder Diagnosis and Treatment Procedures” – the mere title should give you an idea about the quality of this document – approved by the Minister of Health in August 2022, regulates healthcare only for unmarried people of legal age. Trans kids and teens are forced to wait, and married people are forced to choose between their family and transition.

In light of such conditions, many of us can surmise that transition is expensive. Its material cost is clear – doctors’ consultations, legal costs, the price of medications and procedures, but no smaller is the cost of time. Time that is spent waiting until life finally becomes safer and more comfortable.

Righteous anger.

Having all this in mind, it should be of no surprise that one of the prevalent emotions felt within the trans community is anger. There is much to be angry about. Every trans person is impacted by transphobic societal attitudes and the systems built upon them.

Most gender affirming procedures – hormone replacement therapy, plastic surgery – are performed on cis people, no diagnosis or waiting-test periods required. Access to these procedures – as well as changing one’s name – is granted to cis people without questioning their ability to choose, or fears that they will change their minds and regret it. This double standard is applied only to trans people.

That said, one can identify a field where similar double standards are applied to cis people as well – reproductive health. Cis women’s right to reproductive autonomy is limited similarly to trans people’s, their rights to make decisions for their bodies is taken from them on account of the expectations society has for their genders. For this reason, it’s disappointing and frustrating that a subset of self-identified feminists adopt transphobic beliefs – our oppressions are closely interconnected, arising from the same social and cultural beliefs.

Transphobia can be found within the LGBTQ+ community as well. Queer and LGBT people are not inherently immune to the lingering negative attitudes that affect all of us in many ways, often without us even knowing. Even in the spaces where we should in theory be safer, we sometimes become the subjects of discussion and ridicule. Sometimes merely for being trans, and sometimes for being trans in some supposed “wrong way”. As if by being authentically ourselves we incorrectly represent the community. As if trans people themselves, and not transphobes, homophobes and sexists, are to blame for our oppression.

The legal status of trans people in Lithuania is complicated as well. In 2019, the Constitutional Court declared that discrimination on the basis of gender identity goes against Lithuanian law. However, gender identity has yet to be included into the list of protected characteristics, as outlined by Article 170 of the Criminal Code of Lithuania. Gender identity is not explicitly included in the Labour Code or Law on Equal Opportunities either. For this reason, trans people who experience hate crimes encounter difficulties when seeking legal help, our experienced discrimination often remains unnoticed, the true extent of it is unknown.

Anger can become a motivation to act. When expressed purposefully, anger becomes a difficult-to-ignore way to point out various oppressions. For this reason, trans people and many other marginalised groups are not allowed to be angry. Patience and understanding in the face of transphobia is demanded of us. When we show emotion, it is portrayed as a threat and justification for our discrimination. Any response that is not equivalent to humility and gratitude for performative actions is taken as permission to trample us.

Even so, it’s unlikely that anger could become an alternative to pain when describing trans existence. Just as pain, anger is a consequence. These concepts can point us towards societal aspects that require change, but it’s important not to internalise them as the core of our identities, elsewise we risk defining ourselves around that which we seek to liberate ourselves from.

The joy of discovery.

We talk a lot about trans pain – this article in itself is proof enough of that. Unfortunately, in the present context, although suffering is not the essential marker of trans identity, the painful consequences of various processes are felt by many trans people. It’s entirely unsurprising then that many trans people feel a sense of fellowship with one another rising in part from these experiences of pain, different for everyone, but originating from the same societal structures.

Less frequently do we talk about trans joy. One might even be lead to believe that it does not exist, is unachievable, that trans people are condemned to neverending struggle. There are certain groups in society that would like us to think this way, to suffer in silence or disappear entirely.

But trans joy exists. It not only exists – it thrives everywhere. Trans joy thrives in our voices when we congratulate each other on finding our name. Trans joy thrives in our cabinets where we keep our hormones, and in our wardrobes where we rest our favourite clothing. Trans joy thrives in our loved one’s touch of the scars on our bodies.

Trans joy thrives despite everything that we are forced to endure for it. Because of this, trans joy is powerful, even moreso than anger. And trans joy is fragile, weaved from a multitude of brief moments. Perhaps this is why we are sometimes hesitant to speak loudly of the joy – we do not want it to be taken from us.

For trans people, finding themselves is a terrifying yet wonderful thing. Terrifying, as we know that we will have to face many injustices for who we are. Wonderful, as having better understood ourselves we can search for ways to live a better life, and community to fight together for it.

Being trans is both an identity and an action. The existence of trans people is simultaneously a declaration that we do not need to fulfill the expectations placed on us due to our assigned gender, that we all have a right to bodily autonomy, that we can all choose how our body looks, what it does, what it represents.

That’s why I increasingly seek to define trans experience specifically around joy – the joy to be ourselves and to live comfortably, the way we want, the way that brings pleasure.

Such definitions, of course, are uncomfortable to a transphobic society. To them, pain is more befitting, for they have inflicted this pain upon us and would love to wash their hands of culpability, having convinced us that this pain is ours. Joy, on the contrary, has a disarming effect – despite everything that you believe about us, you are wrong. In being trans we are happy.

Where are we and where we’re going?

Let’s return to the definition that started this text. Trans people are people, whose gender identity differs from the gender assigned to them at birth.

This definition will likely be in use for some time. While assigned gender at birth continues to hold such an importance in our lives, in our fight for trans liberation it will remain important to stress how it forms various societal structures that limit us.

Perhaps in the future people of all identities will be able to freely make choices for their bodies and names, and the categories of trans and cis will lose their function and purpose. It’s unlikely that this future will come about on its own – we will have to create it ourselves.

In the meantime, let’s let ourselves feel. Feel pain, feel anger, which are a part of trans life, but not its defining qualities. And most importantly, let’s let ourselves feel joy, alone and together. Let’s develop a relationship with our bodies built not on suffering, but on joy for how it can change and what it allows us to achieve. Every second of our joy can be more powerful than any attempt to annihilate us.