By Joshua Valentine
One of the most actively conflicting experiences I’ve had is understanding my gender identity. Scientists struggle to provide a model for consciousness; I struggle to recognize my identity’s ebbs and flows and what they mean constructively.
I’ve had gender nonconforming experiences since as early as I could remember. In the shower or bath, I’d pretend a wet wash rag was a “dress”; I’d wear my mother’s heels around the house; I preferred being called “dudet” rather than “dude”; and by the 6th grade, I was already creating a proto version of the drag version of me, Joshua Valentine. For much of middle school, I had a very “effeminate” look – I was skinny with shoulder-length, curly brown hair. In the 8th grade, I remember a girl behind me in the hallway asking her friend, “Is that a girl?” And yet, I never felt I was a girl; I was simply Josh. Even when “Joshua Valentine” was “Lana Valentine,” I still knew with the most confidence an insecure 8th grader could feel that it was only a subcategory of the greater umbrella of who I was. It was as intuitive as red and green being my favourite colours: it was the only way I understood Josh in self, and Josh in the world.
It was only when my identity became a choice that this intuition suddenly morphed into a contradiction. How could you be a man yet want to wear dresses and makeup sometimes? You must want to be a woman. But you’re still a man.
Hearing comments from some of the closest people in my life was confusing for me. For so long, I was just Josh, alter ego or not, feminine or masculine. Suddenly, what was once beautifully complex yet intuitive to me broke down when judged by the supposed facts of life. I am… suddenly became You are…
At the start of high school, my psychologist diagnosed me with gender dysphoria; for a couple of weeks, I considered what I never before imagined: I might just be a trans woman. Maybe I wasn’t actually Josh after all. Perhaps there was someone I was never aware of. Shortly after the diagnosis I felt isolated and stranded. It was honestly one of the most depressing moments of my life. It felt like the Josh I knew for so long was an alien and I was now the ghost occupying its shell.
It didn’t take me long to realize my gender dysphoria was actually TOCD, or transgender obsessive compulsive disorder, a subtype of OCD where one obsesses over one’s gender identity and the possibility of being trans. However, it took me until my first year in graduate school to realize the Josh I understood in middle school wasn’t a contradiction, but rather a fact. It wasn’t a choice; it was a simple expression of who I truly am as a person. So, while conventional wisdom would hold that I’m either a man, or if I dare choose, a trans woman, I simply identify as Josh. I feel I’m all of the above; I’m both and neither at once. I can be a cisgender person just as much as I can be a trans person.
And you know why that is? It’s because I’m human. And the difference between a cisgender person and a trans person is the same difference between dark and light brown hair. Simply put: they’re two shades of the same colour; both unquestionably human. Trans people deliver your mail and brew your coffee; they check you out at the supermarket, and if you’re as lucky as the citizens of Delaware, they represent you in the House of Representatives.
What I was diagnosed with was not necessarily incorrect; rather, it was just based on a choice that didn’t include my answer. Being simply Josh is just as intuitive as being the person you were born as, or becoming the person you were born to be.
What I hope readers can take from this essay is that life is complex; life is complicated. And sometimes your answer to life’s toughest questions is an alien language to someone else, and vice versa.
So, while I may not identify as a trans person now that I’ve grown up, I identify with the struggle to say your truth in a world of supposedly fixed choices. And as a man who is simply Josh, I can attest to how complicated gender is just scratching at that human surface. Really, the difference between someone born their gender and someone who grows into their gender is non-existent.
For everyone, no matter how assured you may be, gender is complicated, messy, fluid, and varied. And it’s absolutely beautiful.